Seldom what they Seem
by Igenlode
Summary: Captain Jack Sparrow was outraged to fall victim to a pickpocket: but not enough to chase the culprit halfway across the Caribbean. Someone else, however, was...
1. Stop Thief!

Having written a story for Elizabeth ("A Fine Woman") which didn't feature Jack, and one for Will ("Live for Me") which killed Jack off, I was very politely requested to turn my talents to the task of actually representing the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow! 

That was a year ago... 

Now, with the deadline of a new movie rapidly moving up on me, I'm finally in a position (almost; I'm currently working on the Epilogue) to display a result. The preposterous intervening delay may be set squarely at the feet of the two gentlemen who interrupted me: Messrs Errol Flynn and Buster Keaton, consecutively. 

I trust the result justifies the wait -- I trust the end matches the beginning. I enjoyed it at the time. 

(Note: this story takes place some years before the events of the first film, and on the opposite side of the Caribbean.)

* * *

Stop Thief! 

It was all the fault of the sun. At least, that was how Captain Jack Sparrow would explain matters in later years, when the story had long since taken on a life of its own. If it hadn't been for the bright, bright sun in the heart of the emerald brooch, burning with the promise of a full belly, fine clothes to his back and a deck under his feet, not to mention the glorious prospect of rum all round — and (which he generally didn't add) the sheer child-like enchantment of contemplating riches within your own grasp — if it hadn't been for the dancing flame within those seductive green depths as the sun awoke its fire, he would have seen Lily coming. Couldn't have missed her, mate. Not Jack Sparrow...

And none of it would ever have happened at all.

Of course, there had been other distractions. He tended not to mention those either.

The memory of the girl he'd lifted the pendant brooch from on the French packet-boat, for instance. She hadn't been much of a looker — hopelessly overdressed, with a face that took after the father at her side; the spitting image of a little Gallic pug if you asked Jack, although no-one, of course, had — not much of a looker, but she'd had a fine well-filled pair of assets prominently displayed in a low-cut gown, for all the world like a jewellery shelf. More than flesh and blood could resist, really.

Jack's fingers itched all over again at the memory of the pendant nestling on those well-upholstered slopes, where the little beads of perspiration had glistened and clung despite the shade. He held the stone up fondly, watching it catch the light, and admired the mango-seller opposite working the jostling crowd.

"Mango, Mister? Ripe mango, Mis'sus? Tender sweet an' juicy ripe—" Her hand slipped out, in a familiar darting movement, to snip the strings that held the purse of the plump merchant she'd just accosted, even as she swung her hips to draw attention to a figure every bit as sweetly rounded as her wares. Jack caught the swift glance she shot round as the chinking purse vanished, and dropped her a flashing grin of invitation across the back of her unsuspecting mark. Pure professional appreciation, naturally. One expert saluting another.

What with the fuss kicked up over the pendant, he'd had to quit the packet-boat in something of a hurry before she sailed, and until he could raise some dibs on the strength of that emerald he was stuck in port without the price of a penny ordinary at the nearest eating-house on him, let alone a drink. Or two. Or three. So it was a pity, from the point of view of impressing a prospective conquest and potential meal-ticket, that it was at that precise inopportune moment that the emerald brooch vanished from his grasp... and with it all vestige of professional credibility.

It was so slickly done that it was an instant or so before even Jack, his attention elsewhere, realised the jewel was gone. All he'd had was a brief impression of a yellow gown and small, deft fingers brushing across his own.

Then reality caught up with him. Some lightfingered pert-faced pocket-dipper in skirts had just walked off with every penny he, Jack Sparrow — _Captain_ Jack Sparrow, ship or no ship — had to his name in the world. And he, like a common mug, hadn't lifted a finger to stop her.

He'd recognise those canary-yellow skirts a mile off. There she was, barely ten yards down the street, peeping in at the array of herbs under old Mama Coco's awning as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, seemingly entirely absorbed in the display in front of her. Jack knew that look of innocence all too intimately. If she thought it would fool him for so much as a minute, she had another think coming.

But some sixth sense told the girl she'd been spotted. She'd twisted away, eel-like, into the crowd almost in the first instant that he made his move, and ducked under the arm of a brawny lobster-seller, whose basket full of indignantly snapping claws all but brained Jack as he tried to follow.

He was never going to live this one down. Captain Jack Sparrow, cleaned out by a chit of a girl in broad daylight on the back streets of Basseterre...

A glimpse of the yellow gown disappearing around the corner ahead, dark hair tumbling loose from its braids across one shoulder. Struck by sudden inspiration, Jack propped to a halt in his tracks and plunged into the steaming interior of a cookshop whose back alley happened to lead out in the right direction, scattering half-peeled yams and scrawny, squawking chickens in his wake as he burst out again into the hot sun. And there she was.

The buildings on the far side of the boulevard were considerably grander than the maze of crowded streets and alleyways he'd just left. Jack hesitated a moment, conscious for once of his incongruous appearance — it wasn't that he minded drawing attention, quite the reverse as a rule, but he couldn't help feeling that this might not be the ideal time or situation. He might have been down on his luck a trifle these last few months, but someone on St Kitts was bound to remember the famous Jack Sparrow who'd fooled no fewer than three plump Dutch ships into taking him on as supposed pilot under the very noses of the fine gentlemen up at the fort, last year...

But his quarry, having acquired a hat from somewhere and glanced hastily around in the assurance that she'd shaken off pursuit, had halted under a pillared arcade and was calmly tidying her hair. It was indignation at the sheer nerve of her, quite as much as any consideration of his empty pockets, that impelled Jack out of the cover of his alley-mouth and across the street.

This time she wasn't quite quick enough.

"Mmfgh—" She twisted free from Jack's hand over her mouth for a second. "You—"

"Sorry love." Jack bestowed an unrepentant grin on the furious eyes that were all that remained visible above his grimy muffling palm. "'Course, if you weren't so set on sinking those little pearls of yours into me hand, it wouldn't taste so bad, now would it?"

The only response was a glare, and a practised and unladylike attempt to knee him in the groin. Although the latter, of course, might have had something to do with the fact that his free hand had just located his missing property in the modest recesses of her bodice.

Jack released her somewhat gingerly, stowing the emerald away in the breast of his own coat, but having clearly lost this round she showed no inclination to further attacks. Reassured, he cocked his head on one side, examining her.

Familiar, somehow. Quite a pretty little thing, barring the mulish expression. Eyes about ten years older than the rest of her, which was a skinny seventeen by his guess. That look — and the knowledge of where to kick a man — was enough to put her down as a product of the slums. But the hair and dress, too refined, spoke of class.

He grinned. Two could play at that game. Took more than feathers to make the peacock, to his mind. And wherever he'd seen her before, it wasn't at any fine ball.

"Don't take it to heart, love. Hands as quick as yours, you must have a good business going — and better men than you have tried to put one over on Captain—"

He saw the change in her eyes a moment too late, as the door behind them opened, and the richly-dressed young man came into view.

"Thief! Help — stop thief!" The girl had flung herself forward, her very accents changing to tones of genteel distress. If Jack hadn't known better, he'd have sworn tears were standing in her eyes. For a fatal instant he simply gaped.

"There he is, the wretch — see how he mauled me!" Artistic disarray, nestling in her puzzled lordling's arms. "Oh sir, seize him I beg of you — he took a great pendant from my very person—"

The display of sheer histrionic talent on such a scale had held Jack rooted to the spot. But self-preservation, in the face of this completely unexpected turn of events, lent his heels wings. He was halfway across to the alley before the first footman was launched into pursuit. If it hadn't been for a bundle of hopelessly squawking black feathers flapping in the opposite direction, all too closely followed by a furious and breathless scullion in pursuit, the chase would have been a little less ignominiously short.

* * *

"Listen, mate—" It was hard to take this painted boy seriously, even when he was standing on the steps of his grand house halfway up the street, and you were down on your knees in the dust with a pair of his flunkeys wrapped around you like over-amorous boa constrictors. Jack coughed chicken-feathers and tried again, glaring at the girl now clinging in fragile distress to the young popinjay's arm. He wouldn't give tuppence for the chances of the boy's purse.

"Listen, your Grace—" flattery never went amiss, Duke or no Duke — "I wouldn't be blaming you and all that, but seems to me there's just a mite of confusion here. Now, if you could see your way to letting these great bullocks of yours ease their weight a trifle—"

The boy's lips tightened at the impudence; but, to do him justice, he was evidently open to reason. "Very well. Potts — Baker — let the man stand up. Carefully now..."

The fingers of one white hand tapped on a broad embroidered cuff as Jack climbed gingerly to his feet. "And now, sir, if you have an explanation for this—" a glance encompassed the indignant girl in her begrimed dress and the emerald held up between thumb and forefinger of the other hand — "I for one should be exceedingly intrigued to hear it!"

The girl's eyes met Jack's. They held a very unladylike gleam of triumph.

"Well?" His young interrogator looked somewhat puzzled at the prisoner's sudden uncharacteristic silence, and Jack sighed. Best strike while the iron was hot, as it were.

"Truth of the matter is, you've laid hands on the wrong man... in a manner of speaking. Now I won't say a word against that pretty young lass at your side, for she's the neatest little pocket-dipper you ever did see — been at it since she was no more'n a sprog, I shouldn't wonder. Had that big emerald right off me, easy as winking, and a fine chase I had of it..."

"_Oh!_" It was a sound of purest feminine outrage, and Jack winced, sliding eloquent eyes sidelong to his captors in appeal.

"My name," the girl stated in tones of the iciest decorum, "is Lilias Paige. Daughter of Sir Bartholomew Paige of Marsh Stanton. I regret that I do not have my credentials to hand — had I been aware that I should be the object of assault and defamation at the hands of this... _creature_ —" she eyed Jack with revulsion — "I assure you I should have made a point of retaining them!"

She was good, Jack acknowledged with reluctant admiration. A bloody sight too convincing to be healthy so far as his own future prospects were concerned.

He stole a glance up at the boy on the steps, only to see, as he'd expected, that any hope of belief for his story had vanished with the first melting look being directed upwards by Miss Lilias' glistening eyes.

"So... down to the dungeons, then?" He cocked his head engagingly, wondering if he'd ever made such a mooncalf of himself over a charming face as the lad looked likely to do. "Off with his head, and all that? No hard feelings, miss... as pretty a job of work as I've seen done in a long time."

He grinned. "'Marsh Stanton', nice touch." The gesture the girl flicked at him from the shelter of her skirts was one he hadn't seen outside a bawdy-house; but the sentiment behind it was graphic.

All the same, the face she turned to her protector would have done credit to the innocence of an angel. "Oh no, please, my lord... need it come to that? I could not endure to think the blood of any human creature was laid to my account—" a well-judged quiver of the lip — "even one such as this. And after all, thanks be to God and your intervention, no harm was done. I could not bear to stand in court and bear witness before all those eyes—"

So that was the lie of the land, was it? Jack's grin widened.

But the boy was rushing in, oblivious, with the offer of the shelter of his hearth and home — "at least, that is, my uncle... most respectable... you understand" — blushing disavowals and all, and little Lily had smiled upon him sweetly and slipped her hand into the support of his arm. No-one, apparently, save Jack, had noticed the momentary panic on her face, as of the fisherman who spins his line for snapper and hooks a marlin.

His eyebrows went up in appreciation. Quick to take her chances, that one. Fine pickings in those circles if she could pass herself off. But there'd be more than a moonstruck boy to handle...

He shifted quietly on his feet, taking stock of bruises, and slid a quick glance sideways in search of prospects of escape. If there was one thing he'd learned in the course of a long and largely mis-spent career, it was never to waste the opportune moment.

But the movement drew attention.

"And what then of this sorry rascal, Lilias — Miss Paige?" The boy looked perplexed. "Do you—"

"You have my jewel safe, after all." Slim fingers twined it from his grasp, as if coaxing a ripe peach from the bough. (_**Her** jewel?_ but for once Jack prudently kept his tongue between his teeth.) Lilias smiled directly at her indignant scapegoat, only the knowledge in her eyes breaking the angelic illusion. "I beg you let him go with a whipping, my lord, and learn his lesson thereby."

"Thank 'ee kindly, ma'am." Jack knuckled his forehead in mock-rustic deference, freeing one hand from his bodyguards' bovine grasp. "But ye've skinned me of every shilling I had, love — I've a notion to keep the skin on my back for myself..."

He swept the two of them a bow that served the purpose of pulling his other arm respectfully free, turned — before either of the two footmen had really grasped what was happening — and took a running vault upwards to the mounting block that stood outside the range of timbered stables through the archway on his left. Not for the first time, he blessed the fashions that kept fine ladies from riding astride.

There were shouts from behind him, but this was such a familiar state of affairs as to be almost a reassurance. Not one of them was armed with so much as a blunderbuss, and he had a good twenty yards' start. Captain Jack Sparrow reached up for the derrick-arm that jutted out above the hayloft, hung kicking for an instant, strong fingers wrapped around the wood, then hauled himself up and over in one smooth movement as if swarming a yardarm across to the rigging of a prize.

He balanced briefly, feeling the stout pole solid beneath the worn soles of his sea-boots, then leapt again for the safety of the gutters and rooftop escape. Tiles skittered beneath his grasp.

From this new vantage-point he looked down. His erstwhile captors were yelling in the stableyard beneath him like dogs left baying at the foot of a tree. The richly-dressed boy had his arm around canary-yellow shoulders in a protective gesture that struck Jack, safely out of it, as supremely funny.

"You want to watch yourself, mate..." He couldn't resist the parting shot. "You never know where she's been."


	2. Ducks and Drakes

Ducks and Drakes 

Jack shifted his sprawl on the sandspit to a more comfortable position, watching the imprints of his boot-heels down below fill with water. He found another flat sliver of stone from the tidemark ring of pebbles behind him and flipped it out over the water, sending a trail of feathery splashes out toward the anchored ships in the harbour opposite. The movement of a sandy head above the bulwarks of the big French barque lying close in heralded an upturned pot of scraps over the side, and materialisation of a crowd of scavenging sea-birds for the feast. Jack wondered, idly, what the Frenchmen were cooking up down there, and for what guest. Some fancy Frog cuisine, evidently. That was the third galley pail in the last two hours.

He let his gaze stray beyond, where a couple of small brigs were busy loading under the merciless noonday sun, the sound of the creaks and curses carrying clearly over the water in the stifling, breathless air. Even from here, the sweat gleamed on bare backs.

Jack made another stone dance across his knuckles without looking at it, admiring the spectacle of hard labour from a safe distance. A small boat bobbed idly in the water across the bay, a fishing-line trailing. He skimmed the stone in that direction, watching it skip. The sea was almost flat, oily in the heat. No more challenge to it than shying pebbles across the duckpond on some village green.

Now there was a thought. Conspiracy danced across the mobile features. He'd always been partial to a bit of duck.

The high call of a curlew echoed, out of place, from behind the knot of greenery further inland, and Jack came instantly onto the alert without moving a muscle. Only the stillness of his loose-limbed sprawl betrayed the sudden tension.

Boots along the gravel spit. The soft brush of cloth with every stride. No clank of muffled corselet or blade. The newcomer was advancing openly -- and unarmed.

Jack's own hand slid to the knife he wore in his boot; but he relaxed a little. He climbed, lurching artistically, to his feet just as the sound of a tentative throat being cleared came from behind him, and turned with a wide grin. "God help sailors on a day like--"

The slurring words broke off as the shock hit him. Only for a moment.

"You'll have to forgive the poor quarters, yer honour." A sweeping gesture took in the empty sand. "A humble sailorman don't have much cause for entertaining a gentleman of your quality..."

The boy he'd last seen in the stableyard was giving him a level look. His clothing was as fine as ever, but he was dressed for riding and the soft leather of his gloves was splashed with salt. "For a humble sailorman, you're uncommonly hard to find. Even for one as flamboyant as yourself."

The knife was openly in Jack's hand now, and the drunken sway gone from his stance. "Suppose we have a quiet talk, just you and me?" he suggested softly. "About why you might be here, and--"

The other had gone rather pale, but he met Jack's eyes steadily. "I believe I owe you an apology, sir. And... in this matter I cannot turn to a man of my own class for help."

"Ah." Jack settled the hilt of his dagger more comfortably in his hand, running the point along under one black-rimmed thumbnail, and shifted his weight more casually across. "Water under the bridge, mate."

He waved an arm, almost severing the boy's shoulder-length locks with the blade he'd apparently forgotten he was holding, and squinted down at the offending article in apology. "Oops."

Clapping the boy across the back with his free hand, he ignored the resulting wince. "Little Lily fluffed it, did she? Now I'd a feeling she'd bitten off a touch more there than she could chew..."

"Absconded." A delicate flush had risen across the fair complexion of the young man's cheeks, deepening to an awkward red. "With every trinket and garment we had given her, some trifles of my aunt's jewellery, and..." His eyes fell for the first time. "Your brooch."

Jack, sheathing the dagger, shot him a curious glance. "Not that I'm questioning your faith in me word, mind--" He coughed. "But a man'd be hard-set to prove the rights and wrongs of that one, which is why I'll not be holding the mistake against ye. A lady's brooch, see, and a likely ruffian such as myself..."

"The engraving... on the back of the brooch." The boy's voice was very low. "She spoke of the jewel so casually -- a gift from her father, she said -- but when I taxed her with the name it was clear she knew nothing of it."

_Name?_ "Ah." Jack's mind moved very fast, forestalling the dangerous point. "Her own name; no, 'twas not. And it was after you taxed her with the brooch that she..." He paused, as if in delicacy, to let the sting bite. "...left?"

Too much of a sting, perhaps. Distraction failed as the boy sheered off with little more than a nod. "The next day..." He was examining Jack's dishevelled glory with a somewhat puzzled air. "Forgive me, but... is the French ancestry many generations back?"

Ancestry? For a moment Jack drew a complete blank. A lightning leap of connection gave him the gamble, and he thanked his lucky stars, as often before, for the dark colouring that enabled him to pass himself off from Cadiz to Constantinople.

"My mother's side, that was. I'd a great-aunt or so still living down in Marseilles used to send me gifts when I was a lad... I keep -- kept--" taking care over that oh-so-convincing little slip -- "that piece in memory of her." He winked. "And as one loving nephew to another, I can tell ye it's a fine handy thing to pop into hock when I've need of the readies."

There was an odd little half-amused crease between the boy's brows. "That would be the 'Marie-Thérèse' of the brooch?"

"Her mother." Jack banished the question firmly into the past, remembering the antique patina of the thing. Next time he laid hands on an heirloom, he swore inwardly, he'd take the time to puzzle out any fancy writing on the back.

The boy was giving him a queer kind of look.

"It must... ah... have been a great loss to you?" The probe was cautious, but Jack nodded cheerfully -- in for a penny, in for a pound.

"That it was." He flashed a smile of dazzling mendacious honesty. "Else with the price of that stake in my pocket I'd not still be here -- see?"

"I think I do," the other said rather drily, and Jack spared him a suspicious glance. But there was no hint of guile in the stiff young face.

Stripping off his gloves, the boy swallowed. "I've a proposition to put to you, sir, for it seems we've something in common. When Lilias left, she took with her a certain token I had given... a ring of my grandfather's, passed by each heir to... in short, an exchange of promises I see now should never have been made."

The tide of scarlet threatened to swamp him again and Jack shook his head in wonder, eyes soaring skyward. "So the long and the short of it is, these two weeks past you gave away your ring and your trust to a girl you knew nothing of -- and she waltzed off with the one and threw the other back in your face, aye?"

His tone was not unsympathetic, and the other nodded, looking up to meet his gaze with the flush still burning in pale cheeks.

"I'm not such a fool as you think me, sir. I see now I was taken in. I know better than to think twice of her." Privately, Jack begged leave with a lift of one brow to doubt that, but let it pass. "I've made restitution for my aunt's loss from my own allowance; I've craved pardon for the abuse of my uncle's hospitality here. It's been put about with his aid that Lilias -- Miss Paige -- was summoned suddenly home to the sickbed of a sister. No-one need ever know the deception that was played -- least of all my father--"

It was almost a plea, and Jack, who'd long since drawn more than a few conclusions for himself, stepped back, sizing the boy up from his fair curls to his feet.

"I'll lay it was trouble at home sent you out here -- eh? Not gambling, for you've funds enough. Not the wilder vices, for you've not the mark of it on you." The lines of his own mobile face creased in secret reminiscence. "But you've no head for the women, lad: an honourable entanglement then, I'll warrant. Every intention to wed... until your father stepped in to send her packing and you off to the plantations to save the family name. What was she -- parlourmaid? Actress? Milliner's apprentice?"

The boy said nothing, the humiliation in his cheeks telling its own story, and Jack sighed. Some people were just too simple to be true. "Paid her off, did he? Well, there's many an honest girl would rather have your father's gold than your pretty face without a shilling. Can't all afford romance, see?"

The funny side of it struck him, and he grinned. "And here you come running out to the Caribbees to be kept away from bad company... and fall straight into the toil of such as Lily herself. Aye, I can see how you might want to keep that from your father's ears..."

"Then you do know her?"

It was unexpectedly swift, and Jack hedged, fencing for profit. "Could say that all depends -- savvy?"

"I can make it worth your while." The boy faced him squarely.

Jack eyed him, fingering the braids of his beard. "See that plump-bellied vessel out there, beyond the Frenchie barque? See that little rowing boat with a couple of prime rogues aboard, lazing out the day away from their masters, as you might say?"

A frown. "Yes, but--"

Jack stooped for a handful of stones, flicking one out to splash across the water like a flighting swan. "And you saw me down here on the sandspit as you came, right? Idling at ducks-and-drakes to while away the hours, not a care in the world..."

"I take it you're about to assure me otherwise." That little dry turn of phrase again, suggesting well-concealed depths beneath the open countenance and boyish complexion. Jack's look narrowed, considering.

"It's only fair to let you know me prospects, as it were, before those generous cards of yours come down on the table." An instant's pause to let the hint sink in.

"Now, if so be as in an hour or so I was to shy this pebble of mine--" he flipped it high between them, caught it out of the air with an effortless snap of the wrist -- "away to starboard, see, where that big gull sits, why that fat little brig might find herself a whole new crew, an' a new port for her cargo. If you take my meaning." He sent the stone spinning ostentatiously out to the left instead, leaving a white trail behind it that could be marked from all the way across the harbour, and sketched a bow.

"You're proposing rank piracy," the boy said slowly. He wasn't as shocked as he should have been. So... not altogether a fool, then. Jack dropped him a wink.

"Your friend Lily didn't leave me too many options else -- savvy?"

"You're taking a very great risk in telling me this," the boy pointed out, backing away a step. His hand had stolen to the enamelled hilt of his own belt-knife.

Jack merely chuckled. "One, I'm waiting for you to make me a better offer. Two -- it ever occur to you you're worth a pretty penny in yourself? What's to stop a desperate man striking another kind of bargain with the contents of your purse -- or with your uncle, say, for your head?"

The pretty toy blade was clear of the sheath now, and he raised a weary eyebrow in its owner's direction. "Put it away, son. I don't deal in that kind of coin, see -- and nor, I'll wager, do you. That neck of yours is safe enough here, and so's your purse."

Still very pale, the other did as he was bid; but that final phrase raised a brief flash of humour. "I'm not a total innocent, sir. I did see fit to take a few precautions: it's empty, and I've half a dozen men besides watching the ways from this spit."

Jack nodded. "Aye, I thought you would. So've I."

He whistled a clear curlew-call, and got an instant response that brought a wink. "Not many curlews round here, mate."

He turned, deliberately offering his unprotected back, and sent another stone winging out over the water, watching its trail. "So. You've a proposition to make -- my aid to find this Lilias and track down what's yours and what's mine. That right?" He didn't bother to turn for an answer. "What do you say we start with names, then?"

"Jack."

This time he did turn, not so much startled as impressed by the acknowledgment. "Aye, and yours?"

He got a blank frown in reply. "I told you -- Jack. It's my name, and my father's before me. John Fortescue the younger: my father sits as the Member for the Borough of Westcott--"

"Sits in my Lord Frensham's pocket, then," Jack observed drily, grinning inwardly at the youngster's stunned look. It paid to keep a weather eye on politics, in his trade, and patronage in Parliament was common knowledge. "Never fear, son, I'll not hold it against you."

He measured him up. "'John Fortescue the younger'? That's a fair mouthful for a slender lad. We'll call you Johnny."

"My friends call me _Jack_."

"Could cause a powerful mort of confusion, that." He swept another bow, doffing his battered hat. "Captain Jack Sparrow. At your service, mate--" a fleeting look -- "for a consideration."

"The prospect of getting back your own isn't good enough?" the boy enquired with a quizzical tilt of the head, and Jack chuckled, spreading his hands with a jerk of one thumb back towards his chest.

"Pirate," he explained simply.

Their eyes met. It was Jack who looked away first, with a queer sense that he'd somehow failed a test. The boy took a breath.

"Very well, Captain Pirate. You've had your eye on that brig yonder; Lilias was seeking a passage to Hispaniola, so we'll need a vessel to follow in her wake. I'll spare your conscience one misdemeanour at least and buy you that one. Agreed?"

"If we're talking of _buying_--" Jack began, scowling. The considerations that had led him to pick out that particular fat pullet for the plucking had not included her sailing qualities.

"You wanted her -- you've got her. For my purposes she'll serve admirably. As for yours... I'd as lief not know." It was little short of an ultimatum. "The selection of the crew is in your hands -- there I can't pretend to dictate. I imagine you'll want men of your own stamp: I'll ask no questions... but I want one thing clear from the start. This venture is for one purpose only. I'm seeking your aid because you know the girl and the circles she moves in, not for profit. When I have that ring from her finger -- or wherever she may have sold it further -- our contract is ended, and your business is your own affair. Until then, we sail openly and in honesty. Understood?"

For a moment, Jack could guess at the shadow of the formidable man this John Fortescue would some day become; then the boy laughed, and suddenly sounded twenty years younger again. "I mean to set a thief to catch a thief -- savvy?" He spat on his palm and held it out to seal the bargain.

Returning the favour, Jack managed to look wounded and flattered all at once.


	3. Hispaniola to Havana

Hispaniola to Havana 

With a fair wind behind her, the trading brig _Florence_ could show a surprisingly lively pair of heels. Captain Jack Sparrow, balancing with unthinking grace at her helm as her deck continued in its steady corkscrew roll, glanced over his shoulder out of old habit and saw the rose-leaf curl of their nearest neighbour's sails drop further back against the long shores of Cuba. On the horizon the setting sun caught the shortened squares of other sails, conjuring them into fragile spun-glass curves of gold. Only a couple of sluggish merchantmen, and a Spanish lugger inshore... but the moment's glory built towering castles from the clouds ahead, and touched the brig's own stained canvas with a blush of warmth that lent her a stately beauty of her own.

Little Lily had led them a long chase, from the shores of Santo Domingo to the dubious delights of Havana itself, flitting from one protector to another with butterfly grace that promised much but forever melted away. She knew how to be discreet; her victims, for the most part elderly and full of self-importance, were as a rule only too eager to cover up the whole affair. But a man with silver to spend -- not necessarily from his own pocket -- and contacts in the right places, could always find those poor and willing enough to talk.

She'd spent two days as a lady's-maid in La Paguana, and exchanged her employer's sapphire bracelet for a hurried passage to Carameca, further up the coast. She'd passed a night at the inn of one M.Bouvier in the guise of a Guadeloupe merchant's wife, and disappeared before morning with what little of value her host's house contained. She'd been the guest for a whole week of a widow who owned a bakery in the little town of Léogane, from whom she had parted on the best of terms and who, despite Jack's scepticism, had not subsequently missed any of her possessions at all; among her wealthier neighbours, however, matters had run true to form.

From there, five days before the _Florence_ arrived -- although Jack's crew, grumbling, had begun to apply another name to their young employer's purchase -- Lilias, elusive as ever, had sailed for Havana. The boy who'd helped carry aboard her single small trunk had remembered the ring upon her finger perfectly, and described it: _a narrow band of silver, set with small, irregular stones, and the word 'Strong' emblazoned upon it, Monsieur..._ Or in other words, as young Fortescue had pointed out rather bitterly, a half-glimpse of the FORTE of his own family name.

"Well, mate, seems she's still got it," Jack had concluded. "Headed west to pull the wool over the eyes of some Spanish grandee, by what I heard -- and good luck and good riddance to her."

He glared out towards the long island across the bay, checking automatically for the masts of his own ship amidst the nodding tangle moored close by the shore. It wasn't difficult. The tubby little brig -- 'Florrie', or the 'Folly' that the men were already calling her -- was the only craft in sight with as many as two masts. Which more or less summed up -- and wrote off -- Léogane so far as Captain Jack Sparrow was concerned.

He returned his gaze, with surprising patience, to the boy. They were leaning against the rickety wooden awning that was all the town offered by way of an alehouse, and the younger man had pulled off his stiff gloves, in what Jack had long since come to recognise as a habitual unthinking gesture, and was tapping them in an endless rhythm against one of the bleached wooden uprights that supported the canopy.

"Seems to me you need to decide just how much this ring is worth to you," Jack prompted again after a moment's silence. "Tradition's a fine thing... but I've known many a man end up a slave to his past. Savvy? And the Dons over in Cuba'll scarce be sending tales back to Kent of the girl with your grandfer's ring on her finger..."

"I'm not afraid of my father's condemnation!"

But the instant's flashing defiance was followed by a bitten lip, and then a sigh as he looked up again. "I suppose I am, yes... but it's the principle of the thing." An impatient turn of the shoulder. "You wouldn't understand."

ooo

Hot sun and humiliation. Barbossa's men -- **his** men -- bundling him roughly on deck, the _Black Pearl_'s beloved planks lifting beneath his feet for the last time.

Words of dismissal and contempt from the man who -- until that morning -- had been his trusted subordinate, a canny, grizzled bear of a man with an air of casual violence that Jack had chosen to shrug aside. Barbossa. Who'd been -- he'd thought -- a friend.

ooo

Jack's hand slid around the warm curve of the pistol at his waist. The single pistol, with its single charge of shot.

"You're right, mate," he agreed equably, still caressing the weight of Barbossa's promised death. "Matters o' principle, my sort wouldn't understand."

* * *

They'd sailed for Havana in ballast, five days behind, with the last of the little _Florrie_'s cargo sold for a pittance of profit on the coasts of French Hispaniola. With the weight out of her she'd shown a new and almost skittish side that had Jack, who'd thought himself inured to all her unlovely habits, learning her ways all over again. But back in St Kitts he'd shipped a larger crew than custom dictated for a trading vessel, with an eye to the future -- both those who'd been with him in the plan to take her at first, and others who'd come in on the promise of an easy berth and fat prizes to come -- and the work in consequence had been light, and changes of sail quick to carry out.

They'd made a fast passage of it, he judged now, bringing the little ship in to stand across the first of the land-breeze in the direction of the city through the gathering dusk. Shaved as much as a day off the time of that lumbering Spanish craft that had carried their quarry from Léogane. There was a little inlet to the west that had served him a time or two before; wicked memory creased the corners of his dancing eyes. Tonight Cuba -- tomorrow, Havana.

They'd chased the lady far enough. Call it a hunch, call it instinct, but something was telling him that on Havana's white streets events would take a wholly different turn.

The warm breath of the land reached out towards them from sun-baked hills, and high above the sails creaked, sagged anew, and began to fill. To starboard, the first specks of light had begun to kindle in the city beyond as dusk rolled in from the distant ocean, and the colour began to ebb from the sky beyond. Labour at sheets and braces slackened as the ship eased out onto her new course, yards braced round to keep her heading close, and men lined the rail, gazing out to speculate on approaching land, and trade questions and stories. A curse or two spat over the side marked those who had least reason to love Spain.

Smiling to himself unseen, Captain Jack Sparrow held his ship in towards her haven with a steady hand in the growing dark. His fingers stroked the smooth timbers of her helm without thinking, with the same reassuring touch a man would use for a sturdy but willing old mare.

The sound of boot-heels on the steps heralded trouble. Jack allowed himself one brief heavenward roll of the eyes and then schooled his face into complete, disarming innocence as the boy came on deck.

A puzzled squint. "Why aren't the lanterns lit?"

Jack glanced around at the great stern lanterns with a faintly perplexed air, as if expecting to find them glowing, then up again to the loom of the coast ahead.

"Best not to advertise our course," he pointed out evenly. "Being as the _garda costa_ might care to know why we're headed for that little inlet yonder, and not for Havana..."

"And **why**, pray, not for Havana?" Instant suspicion. Jack sighed.

"One, I've a rooted objection to paying extortionate harbour dues," he suggested. "Two, if the Dons take one of their unaccountable dislikes to an English face, we'd never clear the forts on the harbour mouth again. Three--"

Memory conjured the vivid features of Inez, the harbour-master's daughter, her cloud of black hair tossed back upon the pillow and her slender limbs languid in the afternoon heat. It conjured also the wild-cat fury that had all but clawed his eyes out in that last, inauspicious parting. Unconsciously, Jack's hand had gone up in a protective gesture to long-healed scratches across his cheek.

She'd had her reasons, of course. And two pretty little dark-eyed reasons they'd been, generously endowed by nature and by art, and not averse to sharing, for the gift of a smile and a silver tongue...

It had been almost worth the showdown with Inez. Jack's grin, remembering, was rueful. Almost.

"Three..." He cleared his throat somewhat hastily. "Three, two reasons is enough for any man -- savvy?"

And then the sandbar that shielded the cove was upon them, white breakers gleaming through the dusk; and the question was mercifully lost, as the _Florence_ creaked round, amid the bare-footed rush to man the braces.

* * *

If he were to be honest about it -- which, for one reason and another, tended to be somewhat seldom -- Captain Jack Sparrow had to admit that, in point of fact, he'd thoroughly enjoyed the following day in Havana. From the early-morning ride hitched on the tail of old Teresa's mulecart, with the old woman grumbling away as ever about godless English who expected her to hide them without a word of warning and the promise of heat as yet still to come swirling in the fresh dawn mists, down to the blurred and cheerful cacophony of their return, with the bird-cage rattling at his side and its indignant occupant protesting at every jolt, through all the alarums, brawls and cheap Cuban liquor that had intervened, it had been a joyous abnegation of the creeping burden of respectability. An escape from the _Folly_, her callow owner, and her restless crew. A return, in short, to the swaggering, staggering streets of old, with past acquaintances to look up -- or, of course, avoid -- wine-shops to be milked of every last rumour, and a few high-flown Spanish noses to be tweaked on the principle of the thing. The fact that he'd left the city seething like a hornets' nest behind him was a bonus rather than any sort of detriment.

"Here, you take him." Teresa had reined the mule to an abrupt stop by the turning that led down to the inlet, gesticulating emphatically at the little knot of Englishmen jabbering there together in their own barbarous tongue. "And that devilish bird. I want it out of my cart -- you hear me?"

Jack, who'd been tumbled by the unexpected halt into sudden and unwanted intimacy with the cage and the irate mynah-bird inside it, extracted himself from its spiky embrace and rolled over to lie pillowed against the old woman's empty egg-basket, sprawling flat on his back in the cart-bed with eyes crossed in peaceful inebriated bliss. Staring upwards into the quivering brassy sky, he admired the ensuing tirade of peasant invective with the air of one witnessing a truly great artist at work.

His reverie was broken by an undignified descent onto the dusty track.

"--browse upon the armpits of your mother's splay-legged maiden aunt!" Teresa's voice diminished finally in volume as the mule's hoof-beats plodded slowly away.

There was a somewhat stunned silence. A small island of flies orbiting a nodding tuft of grass at the edge of the downward path transferred their attentions in a desultory way to Jack's face.

"Where, in the name of all that's holy, was **she** raked up from?" Black Grindley sounded almost reverential. "Noah's Ark?"

Someone else made a coarser suggestion. There was a general laugh.

With an effort, Jack redirected his gaze from the clump of red earth six inches in front of his nose and managed an aggrieved glare. "Very old friend," he enunciated carefully. "Hid me once from the soldiers, looking for _cimarrones_..."

An indrawn breath at the sound of his voice. "Sweet Jesu, Sparrow, what did they do to you?"

Jack winced, trying to focus, as a blur of motion at the edge of his vision resolved itself into a fall of fair hair framing a worried young face. He repaid the concern with a scowl. "**Captain**--"

Laughter, from the men beyond. "Not much wrong there..."

Jack shook off the hands that had been trying to help him, smearing reddish dust across the boy's fine coat, and swayed to his feet amid derisive cheers, peering around for the precious bird-cage.

Someone retrieved and crammed his hat on his head, with a touch this time that was far from gentle. Jack almost lost his balance, flung out an arm to steady himself on his assailant, and found himself caught and held. The boy's mouth was distinctly grim.

"I thought you'd taken hurt, or maybe a touch of sun -- but I gather a touch of **rum** might have been closer to the mark. You're drunk as a lord, _Captain_ Sparrow--" the title held a tinge of disgust -- "and I should have known better than to let you go in to the city alone. Tomorrow I'll stain my hair and skin and look for her myself, whether I pass as a plausible Spaniard or no. If needs be, I'll pose as a mute sooner than gamble my fortunes again on your glib claims to the Spanish tongue--"

Jack, having located the mynah-bird by the simple expedient of waiting for the next volley of angry squawks, here sidestepped with unpredictable grace, evading the boy's grasp, recovered his trophy from the ditch where it had fallen, and thrust the entire ungainly armful -- cage, flapping wings, beak, claws and all -- into his would-be employer's arms. The backwards lurch that accompanied this gesture left the other with no alternative but to catch hold before the indignant bird could crash back to the ground.

"What the--"

"Now, there's drunk, and then there's drunk," Jack informed him, regaining his balance with a complex sprawling manoeuvre, the artistry of which would not have shamed a Javanese temple dancer. "An intoxicated man's no manner of threat -- see? When the glory of the grape comes babbling from his lips--"

He broke off, frowning at his own words, then raised an admonitory finger to impart to his hearers one of the more important facts of life. Grapes were a fine enough thing in their way. But to pour true fire down a man's throat called for more than a few fermented raisins.

"When the glory of the **cane** comes babbling from his lips -- for rum's none of your thin French wines, mind -- why then there's not a man in a thousand will credit him with an ounce of guile, or trouble with guarded words in his hearing."

"Aye, an' small wonder," Grindley muttered into his beard, raising a smothered chuckle or two. Jack, carried on the flood of his own eloquence, paid no attention.

He swept an elaborate Castilian courtesy that almost came to grief as his uncertain footing betrayed him, gyrated wildly for a moment with outflung arms, and bestowed a flashing grin upon his audience. "So... is it to be the good news or the bad news first, Johnny-me-lad?"

"Don't call me that." Young Fortescue spoke between gritted teeth, and Jack was instantly all contrition, beckoning him over into privacy away from the rest.

"Slip of the tongue, mate. Bad influence. You've not heard what they're calling the ship, then?"

"Ship?" The boy glanced over his shoulder at the black tracery of the brig's topmasts and frowned, unable to resist the question he clearly suspected he was about to regret. "_Florence_? What do you mean? What are they calling her?"

"_Fortey's Folly_," Jack told him, honestly -- for once -- enough, and watched the tide of humiliation dye the boy's face, with interest and a certain twinge of sympathy he had by no means intended.

"So you take me for a fool."

"Not at all, your Grace." Jack cocked a blurry eye around one side of the bird-cage between them, then reappeared on the other. "If y'r honour would care to hear--"

He got a reluctant grin. "I'm not **that** much of a fool for flattery," the boy said wryly. "Nor do I take you for fool enough to believe I am. We'll stick to plain 'Johnny', Captain Sparrow, if 'Jack' sticks in your throat -- but if you could refrain from embroidery on the theme, I'd take it kindly."

After a moment's final struggle with the cage in his arms, he let the whole ornate burden slide through his grasp to the ground with a muffled crash, and folded his arms across his breast, meeting Jack's elusive gaze with a hard stare of his own. "And there had better be a good reason for **this**..."

Jack chirruped hopefully in the bird's direction, and got back a raucous screech and a cascade of Spanish vernacular that brought a look of interested speculation to his eyes. "Wouldn't work, mate," he told the mynah regretfully, after a moment. "Not even if you could get the goat to take an interest..."

"**Sparrow!**"

The boy had gone pink again, which suggested either hitherto unsuspected depths to his non-existent Spanish or an imminent end to the leash of his patience. Jack blinked in his direction, innocently.

"Good news and bad news?" he offered.

He got a look in response. "_If_ you would be so kind..."

"Ah well..." Jack rocked back on his heels and eyed the impatient huddle of men watching them openly. The little devil of drunken mischief in him took heed, for once, of a mutinous crew not so long ago. It was one thing to bait the gentry; another, as he'd learned, late enough, to hint at hidden knowledge in front of those of your own kind.

"For one, we've no need to brave Havana's walls with your fair tow-head as a beacon to mark us out as heathen intruders," he assured the boy, pitching his voice to carry to the listeners beyond. "Or no call to sample the sweet bounty of her grog-shops, depending on how you look at it. Me, I'm a cheerful man--"

"Happen those same grog-shops might have had a say in that," Grindley jibed. Jack joined in the general laugh at his own expense, waiting for the right moment to drop the name.

"Ever hear tell of a Count Orgonez?"

The sudden hush, and a handful of grim faces among the uncertain looks, told him that some of them had. Black Grindley, for one.

"Seems our Lilias hadn't." Jack kept his voice purposely light for contrast; let one hand stray to his own bared brown throat, as if absently. The pulse lurched beneath his fingers in hectic life. "See, _el Conde_ has an ill name thereabouts, and there's talk of his doings when tongues are loosened. Talk of the pretty girl under his protection, and a turning of the tables on the tricks she tried to play. An adventure too many for our little adventuress, I'm thinking..."

"Where does she lie now?" The boy's voice, a little hoarse, betrayed more in its urgency than he knew. "In the jail? In this Count's house? What if--?"

"And thereby hangs a tale." One calling for a fresh drink or two in the telling; the road had been long, and Jack's throat was dry from the dust. "But I'll tell you this, mate. You owe that bird a sight more respect than I've seen to date -- savvy?"


	4. A Few Mynah Discomforts

A Few Mynah Discomforts 

Someone sniggered. Again.

If it had been the first time, Jack might have written it off as a trick of the ear -- with the _Florrie_ butting her clumsy way up to windward and every block and line aloft vibrating with the strain, the usual creaks and groans of the shop's timbers had taken on a wider range than ever, and the steady sluicing of the seas against her bow sent showers of spray across her deck with the brisk rhythm of a scullion's brush. But it was the third time he'd heard it, faint but quite distinct; the mark of someone else's covert amusement at his expense. Captain Jack Sparrow thrust the crumpled roll of papers and their tarnished gilt fastener back into the boy's hands as if they had burned him, and glared openly round the deck. Even a hint of suspicious industry would have been enough.

But working the _Folly_ day after day against a constant easterly breeze had given all-too-ample evidence of the accuracy of her nickname, and those fortunate enough to have a few free moments had better things to do than watch -- or pretend not to watch -- their captain losing the struggle with long-winded lawyers' Latin that crabbed across the page. If the signs had been there, Jack would have seized upon them. But they were not.

And then the snigger came for a fourth time, clear as a bell, followed by the sound of water pouring into a ewer and the loud ringing of a dinner gong, and truth dawned in the moment that he caught sight of the tell-tale shape of black wings barred with white. The mynah flapped again, briefly, for balance, opened its beak, and bestowed upon him an excellent imitation of a creaky door, accompanied by a series of conversational squawks. One of these days, Jack decided for the umpteenth time, someone was undoubtedly going to have to wring that creature's neck.

Captain Jack Sparrow had done a number of regrettable things when he was drunk, not to mention a great many more that he had never subsequently regretted in the slightest. This, however, was the first time he had ever made the mistake of embarking aboard ship a bird with a gift for mimicry.

The mynah put its head on one side and stared at him as though it could read his mind -- just the way it had done back in Havana market, with the fussy little lawyer and his bundle of precious papers -- and then, apparently reassured, shuffled sideways along its perch on the bulwarks and began to preen. Black neck-feathers caught the light with a shimmer of green and blue, and the strong orange beak smoothed through one wing with a hint of self-satisfaction. A cluster of bright yellow feathers behind the eye flickered amid glossy black, like a glimpse of swinging gold. Unconsciously, Jack stroked his own beard.

The laugh from behind him this time was real enough. Jack cocked an inquisitive dark eye in that direction even as the bird did likewise, and the boy struggled to suppress his resulting mirth.

"Can't think how I ever managed to miss the likeness," he managed at last, between gasps. "And there's no denying our mynah friend has a rascal's taste for all that glitters..."

As if to prove his words, the bird made a dextrous grab at the gilt clip that fastened the documents in his hand, and history almost repeated itself. But young Fortescue, unlike the lawyer, was forewarned. Nor was he engaged in trying to shake off the persistence of a certain Captain Jack Sparrow...

* * *

Orgonez was an ill man to cross. As much could be said -- and truly -- of any grandee of New Spain where dealings with the upstart English were concerned, and in Havana it would have given rise to no remark. As much could be said of many great men, Spanish, English or Dutch, by the servants and shopkeepers, craftsmen and indigent creditors, who had to minister to their whims on the instant and await payment in arrears, or not at all. But men of his own race and class looked askance at Count Orgonez, with his deadly duels -- some against mere striplings young enough to have been sons of his own -- and his name for implacable, unyielding revenge.

He had inherited a feud with two other great families, one in Valencia, the other here in Cuba itself. The root cause of the enmity, some three generations back, had been all but forgotten amid years of jostling and insult, incursions onto rival estates, plundered peasants and snubs at Court. The affair, as such things did, had taken on a tenuous tradition of its own.

There were conventions in these matters, unwritten but nonetheless understood. Felipe Alonso de Sacalde y Estacia, Conde d'Orgonez -- already cold-eyed and silent at twenty years of age -- had taken up his inheritance without regard to such niceties. Five years later, there was no more rivalry, and no more rivals. The last scion of one hereditary enemy, dispossessed, was reduced to hawking his skills around the courts of Europe as a fencing-master. The sole remaining heiress of the other branch, bridled and docile, was pent on his Spanish estate behind walls as massive and faceless as those of the convent that had given unavailing refuge to her mother and younger siblings, with Felipe's ring upon her finger, her lands in his pocket, and his son securely sired upon her shrinking loins.

Twenty years of dutiful marriage had brought her four further sons to continue the line of Orgonez, grey hairs amid the raven's-wing black, and swollen eyes from long praying. For his part, Felipe made scant effort to conceal the fact that he could scarcely abide the sight of her.

Few now in Cuba had ever set eyes on Countess Orgonez. But there was seldom a hostess lacking in the great house in Havana; and if the women who came and went to preside over the banquets on the arm of the Count were seldom the same from one half-year to the next, and all too often veiled and weeping when no guests were there to see, no man questioned Orgonez' right to entertainment at bed and board. Men had duelled -- and died -- for less.

Gossip in the back-streets, however, had no such compunction. Of English prisoners worked to death there was naturally no remark; of confiscated cargoes and ships trapped in port, only a faint murmur in the merchant quarter. But in the course of a few hours' unhurried enquiry, drifting from one establishment to the next, Captain Jack Sparrow overheard more than enough rumours of ruthless anger, casual cruelty and revenge to raise an eyebrow or two on the face of a saint -- let alone a wary girl with plans to pass herself off at some nobleman's expense.

No doubt about it, Jack had concluded, dutifully admiring the marks on the back of his fourth flogged former footman of the day and helping himself absently to the man's glass the while, Miss Lilias had slipped up with Orgonez. Met her match... and more.

What she'd thought she was doing was beyond his powers to guess. What she'd done -- by all he could find out -- had been to take up with the Count more or less on the dockside itself, in the character of a dancer between engagements, and inveigle herself into his household without an hour's being lost.

Everything else was wild rumour; and a casual, weaving stroll past the high, windowless walls of the outer courtyard had been enough to convince him why. He'd listened, with interest, to the version that had the girl in his lordship's chamber with a carving-knife, and the one that claimed, on the contrary, to have discovered her tucked up in the stable with the pot-boy, the Count's own pistols and a sackful of the kitchen silver, and contributed a highly-embroidered account of his own in which a Cardinal's emissary, a bunch of coconuts, and secret papers stitched into the skirts of a side-saddle featured prominently. Two hours later he'd met the same story coming back the other way, on the lips of a drunken ostler who swore he'd witnessed the whole with his own eyes, and winked to recognise his own fabrication gain currency amongst the rest.

But whatever the truth of the matter, one thing was beyond a doubt, and that was that Lilias' mask hadn't lasted even one day beneath Orgonez' steely eye. Somehow, by greed or haste or simple fear, she'd given herself away or betrayed her true intent. And in place of committing her to the mercies of Spanish justice, the Count had simply shrugged cold shoulders and carried her off.

Overstatement, perhaps, Jack had conceded privately, though it had a fine ring to it. No secret that Orgonez had been on the verge of sailing, that past week; no other errand could have taken him into the bustle of the common wharf, and across little Lily's ill-omened path. He'd boarded ship two nights before, with all the pomp and luxury of household befitting his estate... and in his train, by some whim of amusement, had been the girl who'd sought to make a fool of him in the eyes of all Havana. In the unwilling character and costume -- **most** unwilling, by the scandal of her language at the dockside -- of the lowliest of cook-maids, hands and hair all greasy from hard work.

It was a spectacle Jack was, to be frank, most sincerely sorry to have missed. Almost enough to put all true-born Englishmen back in charity with the Count... or at least those who were still smarting from the memory of a certain inglorious afternoon in St Kitts, long days and miles behind. He'd savoured that image of Lily, stripped of her airs and graces, for the rest of the day.

There was, of course, just one small snag. It stood nearly six feet tall in its heeled and buckled shoes, was slender in proportion, and wore its own carefully-curled hair. Its name was Johnny Fortescue.

Jack had consoled himself for the boy's obstinacy in the bottom of a glass or two -- or three, or perhaps four; things had been a little hazy by that point -- raised a toast to Lily in coarse kirtle and cap, and laid a somewhat unsteady course for the best source of information he knew: the market.

Gone was the rôle of the swaggering sailor-man, freshly discharged, free with a tall tale or two and ever ready with an eye for a pretty wench. New concerns called for a new part to play: and Jacopo the Galician, with the aid of a close cap about his beaded braids, a purloined coat and hat and a most suffocating unseasonable muffler, vanished in favour of the meek and humble clerk Papeda, with a weak head for drink and an obstinate enquiry as to the holdings of His Excellency Felipe de Sacalde, Count Orgonez.

For it was all very well to ask after the Count's destination and be told that he had sailed for the Bahamas; the half-witted lackey who guarded the gates of the great mansion in Havana had no more notion of his master's possessions there than could the footman at the town house of John Fortescue the elder, M.P., have placed the estate in the Indies to which the son of the house had been dispatched. The Crown of Spain held no remit over those reef-ridden cays save what law her warships could enforce, and any man with a private army -- or retainers enough to serve as such -- and a fancy for an island of his own could take a claim to do exactly as he pleased. Jack, who had lain at anchor more times than one amid that same maze of reefs, had not the slightest intent of sailing at random to seek out an unknown island, for the price of any promise his young patron might offer.

Market-day in Havana was the same loud bustle as anywhere else. Rusty black and brilliant cloth mingled without restraint as gay-scarved girls, wrinkled grandmothers, brawny young hawkers and long-faced clerics all thrust their way through the crowd, or cried their wares. Pretty faces were hidden behind veils, creamy demure ovals merely hinting at temptations to come, or exposed boldly to the sunlight beneath gaudy combs or a loosely-knotted scarf. Ragged children were everywhere, darting behind stall-holders' backs or between the crowd in quest of a slack purse or unguarded goods. A great screeching and scolding from one corner of the square proclaimed an overset basket of eggs. Jack recognised old Teresa's unmistakable accents amid the hubbub and had to suppress a grin.

He'd kept his head down, hands folded placatorily in his sleeves, a little inoffensive, scuttling figure. It was all in the walk and the words, he'd learned long ago, cultivating his own flamboyance; and few of those who thought themselves acquainted with Captain Jack Sparrow would have credited his occasional talent for passing as a nonentity.

It had been chance that took Orgonez' lawyer through the square at that precise hour, although Jack's version of the tale preferred to assign it to his own resource and sagacity. And it had definitely been chance that brought them face to face amid the stacked cages of the bird-seller, with a medley of chirps and bright plumage all around, and the wicked beady eye of the black-feathered mynah in its great gilded turret overlooking them all, like an avaricious priest surveying his flock.

"You have been looking for me, I believe?"

The lawyer's voice was a ridiculous blend of pomposity and would-be aristocratic intonation, and Jack -- whose Spanish was fluent enough but betrayed the Creole tang of those amongst whom he'd acquired it -- had kept his eyes carefully lowered to hide the devil of merriment that had sprung up there. He bobbed assent, agile mind already wondering how best to turn this unsought encounter to his advantage. When he'd been asking after Doctor Mouravez through the market, it had been as an opening gambit on the assumption that the man was safely out of reach...

He broached the subject, delicately, and with about as much success as he'd anticipated. The lawyer Mouravez was as circumspect as all his kind, and not in the least disposed to divulge his client's affairs without a great deal more information on the supposed clerk's employer and antecedents than Jack had any intention of supplying. Jack had fallen back on stupidity and persistence, hiccoughing a little to lead aside suspicion -- it was amazing, he'd long since discovered, what an intoxicated man could get away with -- and reflecting ruefully the while that maybe the last few rounds of liquor had been a mistake after all.

It wasn't that he couldn't hold his drink. Just that his head was swimming a little in the hot sun, and if he'd been as quick off the mark as he was accustomed he'd have found a way at the start to get a look at those papers Mouravez was carrying; the ones he'd clutched so possessively at the mere mention of Orgonez' island terrain... And it was at this point, with an unseemly inward leap of glee, that Jack had espied the beak reaching out over the good doctor's shoulder for the glimmer of gilt at the top of that cradled pile, and observed a sheaf of the parchments in question vanish between the bars into the mynah's tall cage.

Mouravez, snapping out answers to persistent enquiries, had been quite oblivious. Jack's eyes began to dance. He'd glanced around casually, marking out potential routes of retreat, and manoeuvred the man backwards between himself and the bird-seller's anxiously hovering son. Moments later, with the pride of the merchant's stock clutched to his shabby vest and the disbelieving hue-and-cry just beginning to rise, the supposed Señor Papeda was in full flight through Havana market, leaving a trail of devastation in his cannoning wake. And ten minutes after **that**, the cart of a grumbling Teresa, still lamenting her broken eggs, could have been seen leaving the city at a lumbering gallop, bearing with it an indignant cage-bird beneath the sacks and a tatterdemalion figure, braids flying free: Captain Jack Sparrow, in a state of high intoxication and satisfaction with his own clever self.

* * *

Opening up the lock to retrieve the ragged papers from the base of the big cage had been the work of a minute. But the mynah, far from appreciating its liberty, had shown a distinct and embarrassing preference for human company. Taking the bird on board ship with them had, for some reason that now escaped Jack's jaundiced understanding entirely, seemed a highly entertaining idea at the time.

He directed his glare equally between the bird and his laughing companion, took the documents back from the boy with an ungracious hand, and spread the pages out on the capstan-head, frowning at the cramped lettering with a scowl. The _Folly_ was pitching briskly across the waves, and he had to shield the papers from a fresh shower of spray.

The Latin swam before his eyes in the bright sunlight, leaping with the motion of the ship in a wild dance that betrayed just what heavy weather the brig was making of it, despite the long habit that kept him on his feet almost without thinking. He could make out his ABCs as well as any clerk -- had had the Latin poets beaten into him as unwillingly as any other lad, before he'd abandoned education in the Ancients for lessons in the shifting feel of the wind and the press of the differing sails on the hull, a schooling as complex and unspoken as that of women's ways. He'd had the quickness and wit to be a fair scholar, once.

But those years were rusted and weed-ridden beyond recall... and this was no Epic or Ode, but a close-knit gabble of contractions and abbreviations that resembled nothing so much as a tatting-pattern. If it hadn't been for the boy, he'd have thrown the whole thing in scraps to the sea and washed his hands of it.

But a land-holder's son, it seemed, had other talents beyond sheer obstinacy. He'd been taught to scrutinise deeds, and expand legal documents.

Jack Sparrow set his jaw and stared down at the flickering words for the tenth successive day, running a finger slowly down the side of the passage on the inner page that was already marked by the wear of innumerable such porings. If there was one thing that fretted more than he could abide, it was to be dependent on another man for his bearings.

Somewhere behind him, the mynah bird let out a fluent snatch of flute-like music. He ignored it.

A looming presence at his shoulder was the boy, contrite now and suitably straight-faced. Jack glanced up. "And you're certain that in all this there's no other hint as to the island's whereabouts?"

"You've had me through the whole thing more times than I can count." The boy winced as another gust caught them and loose hair whipped across his eyes. "This isn't a treasure-map, Captain Sparrow, it's a survey of revenues and land! If you want figures for acreage of cane in the south of Cuba, I could give them to you; but not Master Secretary Pepys himself could have pulled a latitude and longitude out of a couple of clauses and a margin notation..."

"It's not your word I'm doubting," Jack said patiently, bending once more to the page and trying to call up an image of the mental chart he carried. "Now, if you'll just climb down from that high horse of yours, see, and parse me this line one more time -- _lying westward where the isle to the north gives shelter_, I make it--"

The fair head of the other came down close to his own, frowning likewise as he stooped to puzzle out the close text. "_The sheltered west_, I make it: _lying in the sheltered west of the isle_." His face cleared. "That was it: the 'north' belongs here, with the next part. Not _to the north_ but _of the north_ -- the north wind."

"Aye, that was it," Jack agreed, cheerfully, appropriating credit for the whole. "Wind and no manner of land to the north; that would be the island I had in mind. And the rest fits snug as a lady's glove, down to the very reef that shields the bay."

The moment's doubt was thrust deep out of sight in the vaunting satisfaction of his guess. "We're on course right enough for 'Mistress Lilias Paige' and whatever Orgonez took from her... unless you've an eye to a better bargain."

Suspicion, and a faint flush. "What do you mean?"

The question hung between them for a moment. Jack rolled the parchments and tucked them back into the breast of his coat, glancing up at the rigging. The sagging canvas above them was braced round as far as it could go, but even so the sails' curve shivered and threatened to flap with every wave that lifted their bow. They were lying too close to the wind as it was -- the southward fluke that had enabled them to hold this course was already swinging back, inexorably, into the east.

Jack sighed. "See, these isles of yours are set two points in the wind's eye from where we lie." He turned to lean against the bulwark, settling one foot comfortably against the lowest rail, and met the boy's wary eyes with a look of injured innocence. "Now that's a weary long voyage and a hard one..."

"The same for Orgonez as for us, surely?" Fortescue frowned. "I'm no sailor, but surely we just tack up to windward, forward and back, until we get there?"

Jack gave him a look. "If his ship lies but three points closer to the wind than this tub -- more than probable -- he'll have no need to tack, see? This _Florence_ of yours was made for fair winds and a full hold; set her head upwind and any craft'll be the match of her. Could be we're a day or two behind -- could be a week or more, when all's said and done."

"Then we'll just have to do the best we can." The boy's chin had gone up, and Jack leaned forward, wheedling.

"Wind's shifting, mate -- can't hold this course. We'll have to come about and make a long board down to the s'uth'rd." He cast a glance round to starboard, where the land lay invisible under the horizon, and raised dark brows invitingly. "Now if so be as we were to fall off a point or two further on that tack, we could be running down across the wind into frequented waters, with Tortuga snug under our lee. Plump Spanish ships a-plenty, an' a share in the profit for all--"

He broke off. Not, by any means, because words had for once failed him; but because there was a dagger-point pricking at his throat.

"Is that what they've been whispering?" The boy's voice shook in an undertone. "Is that where your heart's hankering, Sparrow -- you and your worthless crew? Piracy on the ships of His Most Catholic Majesty -- with whom, may I remind you, we are not presently at war -- in place of hard work and a wearisome pursuit!"

He pressed harder, pinning Jack back against the rail. "Is that--"

Jack's eyes had widened, mesmerised by the enamelled hilt a few inches in front of his face. He held up a hand as if to interrupt, cautiously. Palm outward. "If I could just get in a word here--"

In the moment's hesitation that followed, he grinned. Dazzling and deliberate; absolute, flashing insincerity that never failed. "Aren't you forgetting something, son?"

No longer the painted popinjay, at least. Weeks on board ship and the boy's own sense had taken care of that. Plain coat and shirt, salt-stained. The high heels of Court fashion abandoned to bring him down to the sure-footed level of the rest. Weathering on the pink-and-white complexion. The curls long since fallen out of the fair hair that still fell loose about his shoulders, in one last gesture towards the mode...

The righteous indignation in the boy's face had been checked by an instant's confusion. Jack ignored the dagger, his grin widening. "One," he pointed out, "we had a contract -- savvy? Two, your father's name don't hold much weight on this deck to back that little blade. Three--"

His eyes narrowed suddenly, tracking unseen movement behind the boy's shoulder even as his other hand came up. Young Fortescue, his back towards the open deck, began an instinctive -- fatal -- glance round. There was a stifled cry.

"Three," Jack continued blithely a heartbeat later, twirling the bright knife-hilt between finger and thumb: "I'm _Captain Jack Sparrow_, see?" And the grin that met the furious blue gaze trapped beneath his own was every bit as unrepentant as the unorthodox grip that pinned the boy prone against the deck.

o-o-o

Not a dignified position, that. Jack gave the lesson a minute or two to sink in and then rocked back on his heels in a crouch, removing the dubiously-placed knee that had held his opponent helpless, and watched the boy struggle to sit up.

A mock-sorrowful shake of the head. "And just how were you planning to deal with the rest of me 'worthless crew' then, Master Johnny? One against all and all against one with that pretty toy of yours?"

He flipped the hilt round in his hand again, tossed it, caught it neatly out of the air, blade-downward, and surveyed it with interest before tossing it back to its owner. "Nice pattern, pity about the edge."

"You--" The boy stared at the weapon, then at Jack's empty hands. "Wha--"

Of course, if you were to be charitable, Jack considered, you could factor in a protest that young Johnny was still out of breath. Couldn't help but see the likeness to a fish, though, when his mouth opened and closed like that...

He settled himself more comfortably on the deck as the ship met another wave.

"Now if I was to threaten a man, I wouldn't be doing it with an eating-knife." A long dagger was suddenly dangling between his fingers, conjured by a flick of his hand from its hiding-place in his boot. He tilted his head backwards in demonstration, holding the blade in a feather-light caress at his own throat.

Skin caught a moment and parted, almost without pain, beneath the rough silk of the razor edge; and then the trickle of blood, with its sting. The boy's eyes were riveted in disbelief.

"Got to make your point, see," Jack explained, still cheerfully holding himself hostage. A wink and a twist of the wrist, and the blade had vanished. One neat movement took him to his feet, balanced against the ship's sway.

He held out a hand to the boy, hauling him deftly up. The two watched each other for a long moment as the rigging thrummed overhead, Jack with one eyebrow slightly raised, young Fortescue's mouth white and set.

"You've made it plain enough, **Captain**, that I'm alone here -- that my wishes run only until your scruples end--"

"Have I ever held a knife to your throat?"

Jack's tone was injured, and the boy's mouth crooked a reluctant smile. "Have you ever needed to?"

True enough. Jack sighed.

"Maybe this is hard for you to grasp, but I'm a man o' my word." Ingenuously given, creatively interpreted, yes, but... he'd yet to make a bargain he hadn't intended to keep. At the time. "Aye, it's been a long chase. Longer than any of us were counting on. I've heard whispers below decks. But the end of it's for you to choose."

He coughed hastily. "Within reason, of course, within reason."

"I'm sure I can rely upon your experience to tell me when I'm becoming unreasonable." The dry words could have been meant in all innocence; but they knew each other too well now for that.

The boy glanced around, as Jack had done earlier, at the horizon and then up at the sails. "So your **suggestion** is that in lieu of locating Count Orgonez, Lilias, and her possessions, it is more to our advantage to engage upon a little private warfare with blameless subjects of His Majesty of Spain?"

'Blameless', Jack reckoned, was more a matter of opinion. But he saw no profit in arguing the point. "With a man like Orgonez, odds are you'd be wasting your time. Could be he took a fancy to drop the girl overboard two days out from Havana--"

He observed, with interest, the effect this artless sally had on young Fortescue's colour, and grinned. "Aye, I'd a notion the wind lay in that quarter..."

From pallor to hot scarlet, and a brave try at recovery. "Whatever she may have done, she's an Englishwoman at least! I wouldn't leave a **dog** in the hands of that--"

"No worries, then," Jack said brightly. He'd a sudden hunch that Orgonez' island might prove profitable in more ways than one. But he took pity on the boy's unhappy frown.

"He'll not drown her, mate. He's got a fine liking for a dish of revenge served cold, has our Count, and a mort of ingenious ways to serve it up; but while his fancy holds I'll warrant you he'd sooner have her humbled in full sight than waste his effort over the side. We'll fetch back Miss Lilias sure enough--"

The mynah, perched swaying on the rail, let out a loud and all too appropriate phrase from old Teresa's vocabulary, as the wind backed round further and the sails flapped sharply overhead. Time, and more than time, to come about onto the other tack.

"So we'll be giving Tortuga a miss, then?" One look gave him the answer. "Ah well, there's other times and other ports of promise..."

An instant's wistful anticipation. But the appeal of the present, as ever, was too strong to resist.

"Seems to me the mynah's in the right of it." Jack winked. "You need to decide if it's a whipping or a wedding you've got in mind, young Johnny..."


	5. Villainy Revealed

Villainy Revealed 

The Count didn't stint himself where his little island hideaway was concerned, that was for certain. It was the boast of Captain Jack Sparrow -- more than that, it was **true** -- that he'd taken his leave alike of an Emperor's envoy and the greatest scum of the Caribbean without turning a hair, and without deigning to alter his mode of dress or his manner one jot for either. He was possessed of quite as much personal vanity as the next man, but he had no mind to lace himself into whaleboned coats or mince in scarlet heels for the sake of currying favour with those whom chance had given guns or gallows at their disposal.

He trod softly down the panelled passage in young Fortescue's wake, absently noting the antique silver and china of the vases in each alcove as they passed, and ignored the trace of hauteur he'd seen in the eyes of the white-pated butler who'd admitted them, and the armada of crimson-liveried footmen who'd sailed in to form an oh-so-respectful escort to the presence chamber of _el Conde_... each one an ebony giant capable of wringing the shabby intruder's neck single-handed. Assuming, of course, that he was daft enough to give them the chance.

At Johnny's prompting, he'd grudgingly made a show of shining up the buckle on his belt, and -- with rather more enthusiasm -- scoured his hilt and sword-blade into glistening cleanliness in its borrowed sheath; a bare cutlass at the waist might do for boarding, but when it came to bringing weapons into the house of a Spanish grandee, there was rather more chance of gaining admittance if said weapons at least resembled the accoutrements of a gentleman. If the boy insisted on wasting his time (and any advantage of surprise) on bearding Orgonez in his lair, face to face, then Jack had every intention of making the most of the opportunity. And that did not include being left like a ruffian escort at the door.

Johnny, on the other hand, had done himself proud: if preening up like a Court fop was your yardstick, which in Jack's case wasn't by a long shot. After a heated argument which Jack -- who hadn't the slightest faith in Orgonez' word -- had allowed the boy to think he'd won, on the pragmatic grounds that whatever happened it couldn't hurt to have a look at the lay of the land under the cover of a peaceful parley, the _Florence_ had sailed openly into the bay where the Spanish ship lay idling at anchor. Judging by the liveried retainers encamped sweating on the beach to greet their arrival, _Florrie_'s approach had not in any case gone unnoticed.

In the hours that followed, while Jack's crew eyed the island suspiciously from its barren sands to the stumps and scrub upon the low hills beyond, and the tub of slowmatch smoked innocuously between the _Florrie_'s two little pop-guns -- "Nothing like a good light for a pipe o' baccy to keep the men's nerves from fretting," Jack had observed, straight-faced, as he caught the direction of young Fortescue's glance -- in the hours that followed, the boy had done his level best to make a brave show with what resources remained to him on board. It was the first time, as Jack drily observed, that he had ever been privileged to witness the spectacle of a musket ramrod serving for curling-irons; but the boy had continued doggedly to make his toilette in the face of his companion's ribaldry, fighting tangled lovelocks back into some semblance of order, brushing out the one good coat that remained unworn, and doing the utmost to press some crispness back into his linen.

He'd made a good job of it, Jack conceded privately, padding now behind the youngster in his own slouched boots and worn leather with a shrug of admiration for a task well-done. He'd liked the boy better in plain coat and breeches, but there was no denying that in Orgonez' household, peacocking it gained a measure of respect. He couldn't shift a suspicion, however, that the effort hadn't been all for the houseboys' benefit -- or even for Count Orgonez...

One last door. Double doors, at the end of the passage. No expense spared, Jack concluded again, admiring the burnished handles with the part of his mind that reckoned up such things even as the butler ahead gestured the Englishmen to a halt, stooped with gloved hands to take hold, and flung the doors apart. A long room, cool and gloomy as a cathedral and seeming in that moment to yawn as vast, opened out.

From a high window in the opposite wall, a gleam of coloured panes laid a trail of ruddy light across the floor to their feet like a dim arrow; one aimed from the dais, the two doors to its either side, and the great chair in its centre. The occupant's face, with its red-tinged halo, was silhouetted from behind.

Cleverly done. Jack's mouth twitched sidelong in recognition. Must have cost _el Conde_ a mint to ship in that painted glass, and have it set just so. He'd a mind to play up the name of devil, had he? The theatrics of it struck an answering chord from his own flamboyant nature.

He swaggered forward -- thrusting Johnny aside and wrong-footing their escort, who'd clearly expected a moment's awe-struck obedience on the threshold -- and swept his largest bow, making certain the assorted jewellery on his person caught the light.

"Your Excellency. Your Serenity. Your Supreme Magnificence..." The tone could not have been more humble; or more insolent. Jack let the momentum of the gesture carry him a pace or so to the side, into the shadows, and looked up, all innocent guile. "A mite gloomy in here, isn't it?"

Orgonez, in front of him, was still no more than a silhouette; but his own features were equally obscured. Behind him he heard an intake of breath and a sharp clatter of heels -- which he diagnosed with unfailing accuracy as protest overcoming Johnny's frozen reaction -- and grinned.

In response, he glimpsed what might have been a momentary glint of teeth from the dais above. Their host gestured, sharply, with a click of the fingers. Shadows shifted as two footmen entered briskly, bearing lamps. A further gesture directed them forward and to either side of the chair, oiled skin gleaming in the lamplight as they stiffened into position like living pedestals.

Jack, eyeing them closely, caught only the slightest tremor of effort in the outstretched arms. The Count paid them not the slightest further attention, although either black giant stood close enough to relinquish his burden in an instant with a single blow to his master's throat. It was a demonstration of supreme arrogance, and supreme confidence.

Captain Jack Sparrow and Felipe de Sacalde regarded one another with mutually concealed curiosity.

Jack was not sure, on reflection, quite what he had expected. The fleshy traits of indulgence, perhaps; piggy eyes set in swarthy folds of blubber. Or a lean, cruel blade of a face, slashed by a mocking line of black moustache. He had not expected Orgonez to display the ascetic features of a saint or scholar, with ice-calm reflective eyes that betrayed no trace of emotion at all.

Dimly, behind him, he was aware of the butler announcing them.

"Sparrow. Fortescue." The Count's voice held a trace of lisping accent, but he made a better try at their names than his underling had managed. His gaze narrowed, contemplative for an instant. "Sparrow..."

**Had** their paths crossed? Jack cast back in an instant's panic; concluded that they had not. Or not, at least, in a manner sufficiently personal for the Count to be nursing revenge. He basked for a moment in the knowledge that his reputation had evidently preceded him, and swept a low acknowledgement. "The same, señor."

Johnny bristled silently beside him, vanity clearly stung, and the Count transferred tranquil eyes to the younger man. His face held all the world-weariness of a prospective anchorite. "You have no Spanish, they tell me. No matter."

His command of the King's English was indeed excellent, and the boy flushed, the indignation that had carried him here baffled in the face of unexpected courtesy. Jack, who was of the cheerful opinion that the smoother a Don's tongue the sooner he would stab you in the back, elbowed him. Ungently.

Johnny cleared his throat. "There was a girl --"

"Of a certainty," the Count mumured, surveying the boy's finery, and was rewarded by a tide of scarlet that brought a flash of very unsaintly enjoyment to his withdrawn eye.

_Thought as much._ Jack, vindicated, settled down to watch the sport.

"An Englishwoman, sir," Johnny was retorting hotly, "and one who concerns my own fortunes closely. She had in her possession an heirloom of my house --"

"I do assure you --" the Count was regretful -- "there is no girl of your quality in the shelter of this cay, nor have I knowledge of such a one. You must understand, señores, that your English ladies scorn the formality of our customs; but alas, I could not in all honour entertain fair guests in the absence of my womenfolk..."

"She's no lady, I promise you that." All too aware that he was being toyed with, the boy ignored burning cheeks. "This gentleman --" (Jack here cocked an eyebrow of mild astonishment) -- "and I have both suffered by her depredations, and we have information that she was last seen aboard your ship, held in close confinement."

"Lili." Orgonez' eyes didn't even flicker. "Had I known it was a girl of **that** type that you wanted --"

He observed, with interest, the effect of this sally.

"I'm not interested in the girl!" Jack and Orgonez traded glances over the oblivious head. "All I want to know, my lord Count, is the whereabouts of the property she took from me: a ring set with small stones, with the name of my family engraved upon the circumference. And Sparrow here seeks a pendant brooch that has been in his family since two generations back --"

A liberal interpretation even of the story he'd told, Jack considered. Young Johnny was laying it on a bit thick.

"I regret that I know nothing of such a jewel." The Count's tone held patience, finality -- and patent untruth. He knew, all right, and wasn't even bothering to conceal it... the saintly spider. No doubt took pleasure in watching the heretic English unable even to give him the lie.

The Spaniard rose to his feet with a duellist's grace. "But perhaps you would care to question the girl yourself?"

Something echoed quietly behind his words; the gambit of a chessman advanced, and set down with a click. The boy's face lit up. Jack winced.

"Remind me sometime never to take you to market," Jack observed under his breath as the door to the left of the dais began to open.

For a miracle, it actually got Johnny's attention away from the promised approach. He gave Jack a look of complete distraction. "What..?"

Jack sighed. "If you could just make some play of indifference, see -- give that stiff upper lip a good airing -- you'd be liable to drive a better bargain. Prize the goods too highly, and ye'll end up paying through the nose... savvy?"

Though he'd wager young Fortescue had never chaffered for coconuts in his life, nor yet had to dicker over the price of a banana. Especially dressed as he was now. The image was irresistible; and it was in the face of Jack Sparrow's broadening grin and his companion's scowl that the girl Lily came into the room.

To his surprise, Jack had to thrust down an unwelcome impulse of pity. He'd wanted the tables turned; wanted to see Miss-Paige-of-Marsh-Stanton with her pretty nose in the dust for a change. But when he'd pictured her going on board that ship in Havana it had been with a look of furious resentment on her face, and a swagger of defiant fury. Not like this. Not with numbed, swollen eyes, blistered hands, and the listless slump of a London skivvy. Whatever she'd been through, she'd simply given up. Jack told himself, indignantly, that she ought to have some professional pride.

Then her head came up, at the Count's prompting, and she saw them for the first time; and in amongst the recognition, despair, and disbelief, there was a look of sheer flaming appeal that would have melted the hardest heart. Except Jack's, of course. But then he had professional pride of his own to live up to.

Orgonez' measured gaze observed all three of them. "Tell the gentleman, Lili, what he wants to know."

She flinched so at his voice that Jack caught himself instinctively checking her fingernails to see if they were all present; they were. Not a mark on her that he could see -- if you discounted the obvious back-hander across the face that was more likely the work of an over-driven cook than _el Conde_'s style. But he had her cringing to order like a whipped dog, all the same.

More than ever Jack found himself convinced that Johnny's head-on approach was not only hopeless, but also extremely unwise... not to mention unprofitable. Now, if he'd only let Captain Jack Sparrow strike up a bargain in his own inimitable way...

But Johnny -- stiff upper lip or no stiff upper lip -- was looking both mesmerised and appalled, as if he couldn't take his eyes off her. Remembering, perhaps, a canary-yellow dress and a tumble of dark curls in Basseterre.

Her fingers were bare of all rings, of course. The boy swallowed.

"Miss L-- Lily. You recall the circumstances under which we parted."

It sounded unbearably pompous, but no spark of laughter woke in her eyes. Hopelessly off-balance, Johnny abandoned all restraint and plunged on, ignoring Jack's warning hiss.

"Listen. I'll do my best to get you out of here -- but I need that ring. My father --" He broke off. "You didn't sell it anywhere along the way. So where is it now? Havana -- Cuba -- the ocean?"

A glimpse of understanding on the dulled face at last. Her lips parted; closed again, as her eyes met Orgonez' soft smile, before taking on a blind, mulish set.

"I'm sure I can't say, sir."

Even her voice had changed since the days when she'd so blithely posed as a lady. Higher, sharper, with vowels far closer to Jack's own... an accent of home that tugged at Jack's memory, echoing across a crowded tavern, and finally brought to mind exactly where it was he'd seen her before. He grinned, suspicions confirmed. That was interesting.

Not half so interesting under present circumstances, however, as the way in which her gaze had gone in those first moments towards the door on the right-hand side of the dais. The one with the heavy bar.

He nudged Johnny sharply, cutting the boy off in the middle of another stammered demand, and jerked his head towards the exit, playing it up for the Count's benefit -- if young Fortescue chose to lay every card he had on the table, far be it from Captain Jack Sparrow, as dubious associate, to refrain from being seen to turn some vestige of profit.

"Enough, mate. We'll get no joy here." And under his breath, pointedly: "I've a mind to trade a word or two with his lordship alone, savvy?"

But he followed the puzzled boy out along the dim-panelled passages, into the stifling shade of the porch with the glare of the stockade beyond, until Johnny turned at last with a frown. "But I thought --"

"Never you mind." Jack threw a warning glance at the hovering slaves within the door, all ears, and saw with approval the other's quick understanding and nod. "Have I ever held a knife to your throat?.."

An unspoken message passed between them.

"I've a notion," the boy said slowly after a moment, raising fine brows, "that the talking mynah of ours would make a fine gift for his lordship; a return for his hospitality, and a token of the aid he furnished, though alas to no avail. And a conversationalist of such talent deserves a finer home than a mere trading brig... do you not agree, Captain Sparrow?"

An inspiration -- and one after his own heart. Jack kept a straight face despite a flash of purely wicked glee. And young Fortescue could claim, with complete honesty, that he had not been able to understand a word of what the bird actually said...

Besides which, there was the practical side.

"Don't you trouble yourself, mate. No need to ask. I'll bring the bird back over -- save you the trip --"

And get in, without the slightest appearance of collusion, for a private interview with the Count himself. For which purpose -- if Felipe, Conde d'Orgonez, had one-half the degree of hearing he, Jack Sparrow, was ready to credit him with -- he was currently most confidently expected.

o-o-o

Some thirty minutes later, he met the Count's weary gaze and faintly enquiring eyebrow with a guileless look of his own.

"Ah, but my way, ye get the boy into the bargain -- see?" He grinned, betraying a glint of gold. "Trust me."


	6. A Clever Man Caught

A Clever Man Caught 

It should have been tamarisks and roses. Exotic blooms, heavy with the myriad drowsy scents of the tropic night; the murmur of sleepy birds, the chirping insect-lullaby, soft breezes wafting from the ocean.

Captain Jack Sparrow disentangled his fingers from the embrace of a particularly noxious piece of scrub in what passed for the grounds of Count Orgonez' residence, paused to suck at the prickles, and cursed under his breath -- comprehensively and colourfully -- all those who span yarns of romantic island paradise. Rescuing fair ladies (even if in proxy and with certain private reservations) was not supposed to involve plodding through a prosaic half-mile of ankle-wrenching sand-dunes, enduring the attentions of assorted biting pests, and stumbling into spiny bushes on a regular basis. If it wouldn't have aroused so many questions, he'd have insisted on taking a lantern, and let secrecy go hang.

As it was, he'd duly taken the better of the _Florrie_'s two longboats, set sail a little way along the bay by the meagre sliver of the waning moon, made his landing as agreed to the north of the stockade, and proceeded to blunder his way across the island in virtual darkness. To do him justice, young Johnny had been willing -- eager -- to go. But that, as Jack pointed out patiently, would have been an all too predictable development. Jack, on the other hand, had the inside knowledge... and a very good reason, from Orgonez' point of view, **not** to make the trip.

He sighted the dark bulk of the outbuildings up ahead, and grinned for the first time that night. There was, after all, nothing like not being expected. You might say it had always been his stock in trade.

A quick scout along the back of the main block revealed the promised unshuttered window. Under the circumstances, this naturally did not prevent him from checking it very thoroughly first.

But all seemed clear -- no trip-wires, no dogs, no sound of breathing from inside -- and he swung himself up, grunting a little with the effort, rolled across the roughly-hewn sill and dropped down onto his feet inside. So far, so good.

Absolute blackness. He felt around for a strategically-positioned candlestick; but that would, of course, have been much too convenient to be convincing. Fumbling for flint and tinderbox, Jack struck a light, and in the momentary flare before the tinder died caught a glimpse of the corridor.

No fine panelling here. Some kind of back passageway, at a guess. Trailing one hand along the timbers of the wall, Jack padded on silent feet towards the region he had marked out that afternoon as the likely location of the Count's strongroom.

A wrong turn took him into the kitchen, where the fire's dying embers alerted him to his surroundings, and to the woolly head of a girl asleep in her rags under the table. Something moved in the far corner, and he caught the glint of a dog's eye.

Backing away with exaggerated care -- "Good doggy, good doggy" -- Jack felt a sudden sheen of sweat on his brow. He kept an ingratiating smile on his face on the off-chance that the animal could see it. One bark, and the slave-girl would undoubtedly give the alarm. And -- no matter what arrangements might have been made -- his goose would be very thoroughly and publicly cooked.

But the girl made no move, and Jack let the door drift silently closed between them, breathing again for the first time. One thing in confirmation, at least: there had been an empty place beside the other girl in the rags. Wherever Lily was tonight, she was not where one might have expected to find her if nothing were amiss.

He retraced his steps, straining for a glimpse of light. Ten tense minutes and a flight of stairs later, he found it: a chink of candlelight through a door where there should have been none. Not exactly subtle, but effective.

There was a bolt, of course. Anything else would have been highly suspicious. Jack worked it expertly loose with a loop of twine, and slid through the crack of the door like a snake. His eyes widened, appreciatively.

Well, well, well -- and did the dear Count really keep all this on hand, or had he laid it on for his nocturnal guest's especial benefit? On the whole, Jack reckoned him for the gloating type; would wager nine to seven that Orgonez came down here at nights, ran his fingers through the rubies, let the pearls drip from his palms, savoured the sweet golden clink of coin on coin...

The candle, however, was undoubtedly intended for the intruder. Strategically positioned to cast a fair rounded light on the girl, breast thrown out, arms strained back, who stood with her wrists pinioned over her head against the great wooden pillar at the centre of the room. Their host had put a fine gown on her back into the bargain. For a shrewd trader, he certainly knew how to display his merchandise. Jack's gaze admired the picture presented by her profile; travelled further down.

Caught up in the spectacle, he omitted to pay attention to his feet. The top of one boot brushed against the leg of a fragile table and set it rocking, threatening to send the contents to the floor. Bound as she was, the girl could not turn far enough to see him face-on; but the sound and the movement in the shadows was more than enough to draw her gaze.

"Jack! Jack, is that you? Get out quick, I tell you -- it's a trap --"

Captain Jack Sparrow raised an interested eyebrow. "All these years, love, an' I never knew you cared."

A moment's dead silence.

"_You_." Her tone could not have held a more venomous bite if its forked blade had been dipped in vitriol.

Jack hadn't been expecting a warm welcome, but even he had to admit to a certain degree of puzzlement. Only for an instant.

"Ah. So it was young Jack Fortescue ye had in mind? I'd a notion those names might lead to a mix-up before all was out..." He came closer, enjoying her from all angles. "'Jack' and 'Lily', was it? Seems to me ye've left it a might late to start showing a conscience in that direction, love -- after all that's been and done."

"**You** talk of conscience?" She spat full in his face.

Jack -- no gentleman -- promptly returned the compliment with interest. Producing a crumpled kerchief from the depths of one sleeve, he cleared the spittle from his eyes; then, after a moment to impress upon her the favour he was offering, he slid an arm around her waist -- just for the fun of it -- and, very delicately, began to wipe hers clean.

She jerked violently in his hold. Given a hand free, she would undoubtedly have slapped him. As it was, one knee came up reflexively. Jack dodged, and looked reproachful.

The girl's eyes were blazing with a degree of ardour he considered quite un-called-for. "**You** talk of conscience? I heard every word that passed between you and _that man_, and don't you tell me otherwise... you lying, back-stabbing slime, gutter-spawned from a drayman's filthy pizzle! You sold the boy out. You set this whole thing up --" she tugged furiously against the metal hoops that secured her wrists -- "just for the chance at a little extra profit on your own account. You'd take money from both sides, and play me for a pawn in the middle --"

"Just the same as you would, love."

Jack finished drying off her face with a final flourish, and tucked the kerchief into his capacious pocket. He tightened his other arm around her waist as she struggled to turn her back, running fingers across the curves of the silken fabric. Pretty. Very pretty. Must have cost a mint, that...

"See, there's a thing or two you don't know, nor Señor High-an'-Mighty neither." Two fingers forced her averted chin around again to face him, so close that her breath set the braids stirring in his hair. "One being, young Johnny Fortescue -- Jack to you -- is in on the whole affair." Well, almost. "Two, in case it slipped your glance, it's my humble self as walked into this 'trap', and not your young man..."

Momentarily distracted, she scowled. "That flash cull? He's no young man of mine!"

"Seems to me you were mighty glad when you took me for him, a while back," Jack pointed out innocently. "Wishing ye hadn't served him such a scurvy turn, maybe. Or wishing you'd cottoned on to a good thing when ye had it?"

"'Lilias Paige'?" The girl made a most unladylike noise. "And how long d'you think that'd have lasted? The nosy harpy of an aunt was onto me from the start -- as well I scarpered when I did --"

"None o' my business, of course," Jack conceded. "But I've taken a liking to the boy, savvy? Could be there's more to him than those righteous kin-folk of his can heed; could be he knows his own heart and'll make his own way. High birth don't matter so much out here, see, nor history either. Not his -- nor yours."

He released her and stepped back, scratching meditatively at his jaw where an old scar itched. "If he can run in harness with the likes o' me -- an' shape up to do it well -- could be he'd do the same by you. If so be you were of the same mind."

Another glare, all defensive suspicion. "And just where d'you come by that notion, Sparrow?"

Jack sighed. "Now, love, we've known each other longer'n that." **If** she remembered, which he was beginning to doubt. "'Jack' to me friends... that would be 'Captain Jack Sparrow' to you."

He forestalled her retort with a wide gesture.

"An' as for the rest... Very hot you were against this wicked trap of mine. Ready without a thought to warn the boy off and get him at all costs away." Jack coughed. "All very meritable and such, and no more'n any well-brought-up lady should do, to be sure. Only seeing as the set-up was to be your liberty in trade for his... and seeing, love, as you an' I know you're no lady..."

He grinned at her expression. "Deptford Lil, they called you when last we met. A little slip of a thing you were, maybe twelve years old and quick as a flash. One of old Pegotty's girls, born of a dead mother in Newgate Jail. But you'd not have stayed with her long. You'd an eye to the main chance even then, plain to see." Wistful memory. "Aye, I can hear her voice now, shrieking across that tavern: _Lil -- Lil? Stir yer stumps, ye useless spalpeen! Where's me porter?_"

He shrugged expansively. "Well, she's gone to rest now, poor soul. Receiving stolen goods, or so I heard. And I reckon that was the same Assizes that sent you here?" Silence. "It's a long way, lass, from London Town..."

The gentle tone touched her as his raillery had not. For a moment, hanging there in the candle's flicker, she was a waif again; a pinch-faced pickpocket child sent to servitude in the far Caribbees out of hypocritical pity, "by reason of your sex and of your tender years" -- the first counting more than the last, with so many menfolk in the King's service, and so few females of their own colour and creed. If she had known no Hell until then, she had known it after.

"You'll not tell?" It was almost a child's plea. "You'll not tell -- him?"

"If he's half the lad I think him, love, he'll not care," Jack said softly to the girl she had once been.

Then he shook himself back into the present, and brisk enjoyment.

"Now, I wager you can lay your hands on a certain ring in amongst this show -- aye?" Out of habit, he marked the direction of her gaze as she nodded. "So. We'll have you and it out of here, and safe on the path down to the ship with young Johnny waiting. Ye'll trust me that far?"

A second, rather dubious, nod. "What of your bargain with the Count -- and the Fortescue family ransom?"

"Ah, that. Strange how often a clever man can fool himself with his own greed." Jack bestowed on her a beatific smile. "Now, they do say it's easy to walk into the spider's trap and just a mite harder to leave... and I'd my doubts how easily we'd leave the cay with that big ship of the Count's in the offing. Us being uninvited guests and the boy his father's son and heir, a rich prize old Fortescue might pay dearly to retrieve. So --" the smile tilted broadly, flashing gold -- "I laid Orgonez a proposition all neat and tied up, before he could think up one of his own. No need to lift a finger, says I, with Miss Lily as bait, an' those clever cuffs of your honour's sainted Spanish forefathers -- saving the mark -- the _conquistadores_..."

He leaned forward, neatly, and stretched up to tap the wrought bronze that held the girl's wrists pinioned above her head. "Now what could any young gallant -- all primed to the lady's plight and ripened for the trap by yours truly -- do but set his arms around the damsel to loose the catch and let her free?"

He suited words to the action, enfolding her person in a somewhat noisome embrace that cradled her close against his breast with every sign of enthusiasm, as he slid exploratory fingers up towards the imprisoned wrists. Lily, despite his assurances to the Count on her behalf, showed no signs whatever of melting into her rescuer's arms. On the contrary, he had every reason to suspect -- from certain telltale movements in the body encircled so closely in his -- that she was about to knee him again.

"And there," he took up hastily with an admonitory glare, "would be his young lordship trussed and dangling in the morning. Apprehended red-handed, as it were, in the act of robbing dear Felipe's strongroom -- with a tale too far-fetched for any to believe, the girl having skedaddled, love, as part of the bargain. The Count not counting on your touching devotion..."

The look on the features a few inches from his own was very far from devotion.

"And since you claim your 'Johnny' was in on the scheme all the time, I take it that instead of trapping him here for ransom you had some alternative means in mind for getting me out of here?" Her voice held its most ladylike chill. "Or were you just planning to stand here pressed up against me all night?"

The idea had its distinct compensations. But he had reasons of his own for wanting her safely on her road, and he doubted the Count's confidence in himself, Captain Jack Sparrow, was such as could be entirely relied on to keep him out of the way.

He coughed. "Now there's a slight problem in that regard..."

"I knew it!" The girl tried to wrench herself violently out of his grasp, almost braining him in the process, and he had to use his full weight to pin her back against the pillar and allow him to reach the catches at her wrists. And if the wriggling armful that resulted proved sufficiently distracting to prolong the process beyond the strictly necessary... well, to Jack's way of thinking, it was entirely her own fault.

A click. Lily found herself abruptly on the floor, rubbing aching arms with what was almost a sob of relief. And Jack -- Jack, for his part, felt the countersprung hoops on the back of the cuffs lock neatly and inexorably into place around the hands that had reached inside to release her.

"Like I said --" he gave her a hurt look -- "a man can get himself caught up in his own cleverness, see..."

Oh, she was all regrets and apologies and oh-how-could-I-ever-have-doubted-you entreaties after that -- but however enjoyable the balm to his wounded feelings, the fact remained, as he pointed out, that she was in no position to release him without once again entrapping herself.

"Clever devils, those _conquistadores_." Jack twisted around in an effort to admire their handiwork. "Devils, mind, but clever. They called these _remores_ -- used to use them on the Aztecs, down in Yucatan. Gets a laugh, see..."

Lily cried out, shuddering, and Jack caught himself in an impulse to pat her on the back. He was feeling quite paternal now. Almost.

"No need to pipe your eye, love -- I've no turn for noble sacrifice." In fact, suspended as he was, he was already regretting the original idea. He shifted a little in a vain attempt to find a more comfortable position. "Now, my hide's no manner o' value to the Count, if ye catch my drift. An' no-one can say me bargain wasn't kept -- and to the letter." He seriously doubted Orgonez' sense of humour would extend quite that far, but this was scarcely the moment to mention it. "But the best thing you two youngsters can do is show a clean pair o' heels -- savvy? Up anchors and clear out --" a suggestive eyebrow -- "while I... hang around a while, as you might say. Smooth matters down..."

Lily bit her lip, caught between suspicion and distress. "But Captain Sparrow, you've a ship in the offing. Let me once get word to Jack --"

"Bartholomew's bawdy breeches, girl -- you want him caught out in some half-cocked rescue?" And after all the trouble he, Jack Sparrow, had gone through to impress upon the reluctant boy on no account to interfere... He took a deep breath, conscious of the increasing ache in his wrists. "Save your hide and his, love. Take the _Florence_ out as quick as may be. And leave Captain Jack Sparrow to what he does best... looking after his own skin. Savvy?"

On young Fortescue's sense of honour and obligation it might not have worked; but the girl, like himself, was opportunist enough to take the offered escape. She nodded. "I'll take him that ring he sets such store by."

"You do that," Jack agreed, hiding relief. "An' maybe ye'll get it back, by my guess; but that's up to you..."

"I don't need the likes of Fortescue to make my way --" it was a reflexive jibe -- "nor you either!"

But she unbent enough to avail herself of his dagger to slash the clinging skirts of the Count's impractical gown about her legs before attempting the route of Jack's exit; and even to press her cheek, in parting, willingly a moment against his own. It was a pity, Jack reflected philosophically afterwards -- but probably not coincidental -- that he was tethered at the time with his hands above his head.


	7. Point Counterpoint

Point Counterpoint 

For all his high-flown talk, Jack had not the faintest intention of trusting to Count Orgonez' dubious mercies, of course. 'All rogues together' was an appeal that might have tickled the captious humour of a Harry Morgan, but was unlikely to soften the haughty Don one iota. The fact that he had indeed delivered a trap and victim precisely according to his -- carefully imprecise -- assurances was not going to weigh in the slightest in his favour.

Captain Jack Sparrow's acquaintance with the endearing device known as the _remores_ had, to date, been of a largely theoretical nature. But he had encountered an ancient, rusty pair in the cellars of an abandoned fort of the Spanish Main -- complete with ragged wristbones still suspended above a forgotten corpse, a spectacle not entirely auspicious -- and had met with another set during a long, drunken night in Tortuga, when the filibuster captain 'Nez-de-Suif' had dumped the plunder of a dozen ports out onto the tavern's scarred table in a single expansive (and expensive) gesture. The Frenchman had clamped one set of jewelled hooks tight around his big bosun's wrists -- old Gratte-Cervelle being in on the joke -- and challenged any of those present to get them off again; and Jack had been one of the assembled crowd who had roared with increased laughter every time one of their number made the attempt, only to find himself imprisoned by the alternate set of cuffs in his turn.

The principle was simple enough -- releasing either side of the device would automatically trigger the other as the catch pivoted -- and not that difficult to circumvent, for those both sober and forewarned. It was a sadistic little jest, but not an especially secure one; designed above all to raise a laugh at the expense of two prisoners thrust into a cell together. Jack, sounding out Orgonez and improvising as he went, had discovered the Count's interest and possession of the device, and instantly proposed its employment. He had gauged his host's humour to a nicety.

Suspending the initial victim's arms above his head both helped ensure the proper positioning of a potential rescuer's wrists, and decreased the likelihood of his being able to trigger the reversal himself. Jack had, however, decided that the latter feat should be entirely possible for a man with a good idea of what he was doing, even working blind. Indeed, he could be said to have gambled his entire future on just that assumption.

As it happened, he had been quite correct. Ten minutes and a well-concealed lockpick later, the open jaws of the _remores_ clamped smoothly shut on empty air, and Captain Jack Sparrow stepped clear with a distinct air of satisfaction, surveying the possibilities. A certain emerald brooch found its way instantly into the breast of his coat; but he saw no reason, left alone in what amounted to a treasure-house, to limit himself to a single jewel, now that he found himself with a free hand -- as it were...

He kept a weather eye out for trouble, naturally. But the first he heard was the sound of the lifting latch; and it was a moment -- a moment too long -- before he realised that it came from the **wrong side** of the room.

The shadows behind the pillar were thick and dark, swaying slowly to the candle's stately dance. But the outline of the little door was blacker still, widening as the rough planks swung apart. And the Count's courtly velvet was midnight-soft, save for the white at wrists and throat, and the glitter of the great gem at his breast.

"You play me a pretty comedy, Sparrow. A touching jest." Purest Castilian, cool and liquid with hauteur. Jack, frozen mid-reach with a string of pearls burning his fingers, essayed innocent incomprehension; had it flicked aside with a sound of disdain.

"Oh, we understand each other very well, Captain, I think. And the time has come to converse on the terms of Spain, and not on yours."

The barest whisper of leather, as the Count's slender blade came free of its sheath. His other hand, steady at his side, never wavered in its aim. The pistol barrel was chased with silver and delicately patterned, a rich man's toy: but the unmoving muzzle was deadly as sin.

Jack reckoned up the odds, and found them unappealing. He offered up an ingratiating smile. "Spain -- a great country. Always admired your empire..."

The Count brushed him off with a gesture of his rapier-point.

"So. It seems one cannot even trust you to be dishonest. What then is to be done?"

The question, Jack sincerely hoped, was purely rhetorical. But Orgonez was contemplating him with a distinct degree of speculation.

"Sleep on it?" Jack tried, cocking an eye in the direction of the little door. He volunteered his wrists hopefully. "Hang me fast on the wall, maybe, 'til morning? Nothing like getting up bright and early for giving a man ideas. Why, one time my first mate--"

The Count's nostrils had narrowed in contempt: "Silence, buffoon" -- and Jack, unabashed, grinned. Contempt... now contempt was always good. A man was never so safe as when he was being underestimated.

But the Spaniard was regarding him with an icy eye. "You take me for a fool, perhaps, like that little gutter-girl; like your friend the English lord, who believes you give your life for his. Captain Sparrow does not set his hand in the noose unless he can slip free; and Orgonez would be a fool indeed, who watched you play your comedy in this room, and thought to bind you fast a second time."

He stepped sideways, sharply, and tugged on a bell-rope with the hand that bore the sword: once, twice, thrice. Jack, straining for the distant peal, could not hear it; but a moment later it was answered by voices, and the sound of armoured men. Another minute, and the odds would be going up yet again. Orgonez, standing motionless in the candlelight, was tranquil and poised as a figure on an altar-piece.

"I withdrew my men, as we agreed. I watched and waited to see your game play out; to see how, and when, you would play me false. And you did not disappoint. But the farce is ended, Sparrow. I could have ended it at any moment, when your antics began to pall: I choose to end it now. For you begin to bore me -- and that, señor, I do not permit."

He raised a hand; signalled to the man who had just appeared in the doorway, others crowding behind. Orgonez' household had looked impressive in livery and gloves. Armed and towering, they would have given any invader second thoughts.

"Disarm him... search him... and take him."

"Now hold hard a minute --"

Jack flung up both hands in outrage -- without, naturally, releasing his instinctive clutch on the pearls with which he'd been caught; some things went without saying -- labouring under a considerable sense of injustice. The Count had just let Lily walk free... but more than that, he'd accused Jack of being _boring_. There was supposed to be gloating; there were supposed to be gruesome threats; but Captain Jack Sparrow had never been so insulted in his life.

And besides, he had no intention of allowing the odds to swing any further.

The genuine injury in his tone was enough to halt his captors' advance in a moment of confusion, as their leader, lantern held aloft in one vast palm and a cutlass-blade in the other, glanced across at the Count for further confirmation. The candle guttered in the breath from the open door, and light chased across Jack's hands, still frozen in theatrical pose, and sent a pearly glimmer dancing back from the necklet dripping between his fingers.

As if mesmerised, Jack brought his other hand across to grip the string, holding it out as if to avert evil at arm's-length. When the Count, behind him, nodded, he saw the change in the faces before him in the instant before they closed in. His grip tightened.

It went clean against the grain to do it. But one of the things that had kept Captain Jack Sparrow alive and out of the noose, when others kicked their last, was a healthy -- if undoubtedly skewed -- sense of priorities.

Forearms flexed, and jerked apart in a sudden snap that burst the slender thread; and pearls in their dozens flew forward in a costly, unstable shower, rolling treacherous on the floor beneath oncoming feet.

Jack had leapt back in the same instant, as the lantern rocked wildly before an oath and a crash. Oil spilled, hot and acrid with a flicker of flame, and then went out. Candle-shadows shot suddenly high, reeling; and from somewhere in the corner of his eye there came a tongue of fire and a shattering report. A tug at his sleeve and a cry from the door, as Orgonez' bullet missed its mark and struck home.

Now, that was no way to win loyalty in your men, slave or free. Still shaking his head in sad disapproval, Jack swept his own blade from its sheath, darted a blow at the candle -- and lost his footing in the lunge as a stray pearl found its way beneath his heel in turn.

The flame streamed beneath the steel, ebbed and then sprang up, dizzying in the dark; Jack rolled aside, jerking furiously at the sword-tip that had buried itself in the woodwork beyond. And Orgonez was down on him almost before he had regained his feet, rapier against sword, quicksilver thrust against blow and parry...

It was a matter of only seconds before it dawned on Jack that he was fighting not for his liberty but for his very life; mere seconds more before he knew he was totally over-matched. Captain Jack Sparrow was the equal of some and better than most who made their living by the sword in his line of trade. He was good -- every bit as good as he needed to be. But the Count fought with deadly accuracy, speed and grace, and he wasn't just good; he was a great swordsman. And -- not to put too fine a point on it -- he was lethal.

On the heaving deck of a ship, Jack might have had the ghost of an advantage; as it was, only the crazy dance of the candle-light allied to his own agility kept that relentless blade from moment to moment at bay. Behind him all the time he was aware of the sullen, angry mass of servants, blocking the door and ready at any moment to intervene. One giant, more foolhardy or eager for favour than the rest, had already stepped forward with a blow that aimed to split Jack open from guts to gizzard; but the fight had surged back, and it was Orgonez who beat aside the stroke.

The Count snapped out a single, biting phrase and thrust high to the throat, barely breaking the rhythm of his attack. The point flickered back almost too fast to see, leaving a rent horribly red against the man's dark skin; and the colossus fell, unheeded, to gasp out his life amid the pearl-strewn litter of the floor. Driven backwards behind a splintered table, Jack found himself sparing a moment's pity for the poor sod who'd just tried to kill him.

But he had little enough time or attention to spare. He'd heard of men whose past flashed before their eyes; right now, all that was passing before his own was his future. In a hundred different forms, admittedly... but most of them skewered, and all of them distinctly short.

In which case -- Jack parried aside a thrust, snatched up a handful of heavy silver in passing, and barely dodged the rapier's return -- in which case, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to change the rules. He let his next parry take him to the pillar. Curled a bulky amulet between finger and thumb, and threw, accurately. Not at the Count, but at the candle.

The darkness was not absolute, but it was enough.

Jack heard the hiss of his opponent's breath and knew himself to be silhouetted against the trace of light from the concealed door beyond. He twisted aside from the zephyr of a blow more sensed than felt, and struck out, blindly, at its origin. The sword-edge bit home.

Then he was plunging towards that saving glimmer, hearing heavy bodies crashing behind him and the brief, clenched curse of the wounded man. By the sound of it, the Count was about to get trampled on. Despite heaving lungs and scrapes that stung with sweat, Jack couldn't repress a grin.

o-o-o

There was a lamp burning in what proved -- no surprise -- to be the Count's bedchamber. A breath ahead of his pursuers, Jack swayed, pivoted on his heel, and found the door and the stout bolts he'd been counting on. If he were Orgonez (his nose wrinkled up at the very idea) he wouldn't have fancied an unsecured passage into his chamber either.

He slid home the panelling that concealed the entrance, stepped back, and watched with interest as the wall shook to the renewed assaults on it from the far side. There was another door, a grand one, leading into a suite of rooms beyond, for the moment deserted. Jack eyed the contents, wondering just how long it would take for some bright spark in the household to cotton on to the notion of coming round the other way, and came to a regretful conclusion: not long enough.

He closed that door in turn, wedged a heavy dresser across it, and surveyed the costly panes of the window. Now if -- just for the sake of argument -- he'd been Orgonez, would he have had a view from his bedchamber out across the servants' quarters, or across a nice secluded garden? Not much of a question, that.

Captain Jack Sparrow stripped the sheets from the bed in time-honoured fashion, knotted one end to the nearest bed-post, flung wide the casement, and lowered himself cautiously over the sill. Straddled halfway across he paused, considering, laid one finger along his cheek, and then swung himself back.

The doors would hold a while longer yet. His eyes strayed to the rich furnishings. And he'd a mind to a few... personal... souvenirs for his trouble.

* * *

There was a limit to what one could carry. The tattered figure who finally emerged down onto the foreshore clinked at every step; but his luck had held. Behind him the island still lay hushed in its night-time torpor, and beyond the stockade the lights blazing in the mass of buildings were hidden from view. Clearly his improvised barricade had yet to give way.

Jack's rapid (and somewhat encumbered) exit had been hindered by nothing worse than his old nemesis, the unseen thornbush -- and while the latter had taken its toll, the lack of pursuit had allowed him to take his time in disentanglement. It was not, after all, as if he had been worried about catching the _Florence_. He had other fish to fry.

Beginning the long trudge across the sands to the water's edge, he halted a moment, head cocked in bird-like alertness in the dark. Eighty yards away, faint phosphorescence rimmed the ripples of the bay, in a quiet, almost unheard lapping against the beach, pale beneath the moon. Dry leaves rustled somewhere behind him, prickling softly all along the ridge in a cat's-paw of wind as the night airs stirred. From the dimly-seen hull of the Spanish ship, a distant bulk beyond the point, there came the familiar groan of the anchor chain shifting slightly to the swell. Carried across the water he caught the monotonous trace of a loose rope tapping against a block.

But further out -- where the plump-bellied little brig had lain moored at moonrise, when he left -- there was nothing either to see or to hear. Jack let fall the beaten-silver cup dangling from his left hand, shaded his eyes with fanned fingers, more out of habit than anything else, and scanned the waters. If his ears had not deceived him--

Then it came again, borne by some fluke of the breeze: the creak of spars, and a word of command. Topsails showed black for a moment against the glimmer of reflected moonlight. Lily had reached her in safety, then; and young Johnny had done as he was bid.

Not for the last time, either, with Lily in the offing, Jack reflected with an inward grin. There would be sparks to come, if he was not mistaken. But he liked the cut of the boy's jib; there was a calm steel there that would stand the pair of them in good stead when the youngster had learned a little more, and rubbed a little of that green off. The girl who had been Deptford Lil could have done worse for herself by a long way, to his reckoning.

He watched _Florence_ slip out of the wide bay, a shadow in the night, with scarcely a twinge of regret. The ship had been of Johnny Fortescue's choosing (here he conveniently forgot his own hand in the matter), of Johnny Fortescue's purchase: Johnny, who had wished her upon him, was more than welcome to her. She might suit for merchant purposes, but she would never have served for Jack's preferred profession. And it was not, after all, like watching the receding sails of the _Black Pearl_...

Still, the twinge was there, denied but undeniable. Jack Sparrow, who could leave a girl at every port without a backward glance, had a certain sentimentality for a ship that had done her best. He shrugged it off, stooped to retrieve his booty, and set off on the churning slog through the sand to the firmer strands of the tideline, the dark hump of the longboat -- a moment's panic lest Lily had found that -- and the greater prize: Orgonez' swift-sailing warship, the _Concepcion_.

He was doing the boy a favour, after all. Jack began to whistle softly through his teeth, feeling freedom settle around him like a cloak. With the Spanish ship out of the way, pursuit (his own rôle in provoking that conveniently forgotten) would be an impossibility. Plus, he'd staged that pretty picture of sacrifice to please him -- a misspent life redeemed in one selfless gesture for the benefit of others. If he knew the gentry, that should be bringing a well-earned tear to young Johnny's eye and warming the cockles of his heart right about now. With a cheerful conviction of virtue and a mind already speculating the possibilities of the _Concepcion_'s anchor chain, Jack waded on through the night.

o-o-o

Apparently, he didn't know the gentry.

o-o-o

Black Grindley's signal was to have been the first phrase of "The Coster's Daughter", whistled thrice. Jack sent the opening notes of the bawdy little ditty out into the moon-shadowed darkness as he neared the longboat -- but surely, surely it had moved? his instincts shot onto the alert -- and saw the shapes rise up all around him: not the handful he'd been expecting, but six, a dozen, a score, concealed by the long hummocks of the beach and the shape of the boat itself. Breath hissed through his teeth.

He was moving almost before he had time to think, sword free and in his hand, burdens cast with split-second accuracy into the face of his nearest opponent, along with a spray of sand. The big cup struck home with an incongruous kitchenware clattering, and a strangely familiar oath. Jack had been turning swiftly to set the stout planking of the longboat at his back, ready to spit the first looming figure in his way; but something about the sound gave him pause.

The man spat, shook his head violently, and gave him a disgusted look. "Bilge an' ashes, Captain, what manner o' welcome is that?"

Jack let out a long breath and rolled his eyes in eloquent retort. "Would it be your head that's stuffed with wadding, mate, or just your ears? I said, bring those as won't be missed awhile: even Blind Charlotte at the Mudhouse Tap couldn't help but take heed of this many gone astray..."

Grindley scratched in his black beard, looking -- as far as was, for him, possible -- a little shamefaced. "Aye, well, he said you'd likely need more, see. Said a handful could maybe take the Dago ship, with her crew ashore, but you'd never make it free of these waters without men to man the yards. And being as he seemed to know the whole --"

"**He**?" It was hard to wrong-foot Captain Jack Sparrow; but just for the moment he had the sensation that a wave had come up unexpectedly beneath his boots. "He -- that would be young Fortescue you have in mind? John Fortescue the younger, with a head of courtier's curls and a plum on his tongue?"

But he read confirmation in the other man's nod even before he could speak.

So much for the popinjay, he told himself drily; so much for slipping off quietly for the boy's own good. The boy had wits and he used them. Some people were simply wasted on the aristocracy.

* * *

But it wasn't until a week later, ensconced snugly in the great cabin of the _Concepcion_ as she breasted the Mona Passage, with his boots on the polished table and a line of fingerbowls set up between them filled with rum -- just for variety -- that he had cause to think of Johnny Fortescue again. And it wasn't on account of a ship, or even a girl, but the weight of the emerald brooch, snagged and forgotten in the sleeve of a grimy shirt cast aside over the seat of a chair, and swinging to the time of the waves' steady roll with an oddly ponderous rhythm.

He'd watched the telltale sway of the cloth with an idle fascination through the course of three draughts of rum, wondering vaguely as to its cause, before he could be troubled to swing his legs down and reach across to find out. The hard shape of the pendant brooch fell into his grasp as the filigree, entangled, slipped loose, and Jack -- who had completely forgotten its existence -- surveyed the jewel with interest and appreciation, holding it up to wake green fire from the lamp.

A fine piece of work, to be sure. Not that he had any longer a pressing need for its value, but a man never knew.

His fingers brushed across a fine tracery of engraving on the pendant's reverse, unmistakable lettering in its curves, and a dimly-remembered resolution to investigate (or, if he were to be honest, simple curiosity) prompted him to turn it over. Some name, the boy had said: some name Lily hadn't known, when she claimed it for hers. A fluke of memory and a frown, and he had it.

'Marie-Thérèse' -- and his old aunt in Marseilles. He began to chuckle, remembering that afternoon and the odd little looks he'd had from the boy, befuddled beneath the bright blaze of words Jack had lavished on him. Then stopped short, looking closer.

The brooch did not read 'Marie-Thérèse' .

Jack rubbed muzzy eyes, took another drink of rum to clear his head, and tried again.

The lettering was simple and clear, as antique in its fashion as the emerald's setting, but impossible to misread. There was an outlined crest -- a hound's curving leap against a single fret -- and one brief word: 'Cécile'.

Captain Jack Sparrow thought back over that so-innocent interview, the bait trailed with such total lack of guile... and began to laugh. This time, it was at his own expense. He'd been had.

So the boy had known all along, with that little dry turn of phrase; set out to find a thief to catch a thief, and caught... well, caught Jack out, for one. With the emerald twirling once more between nimble fingers, it was a point he was cheerfully willing to concede.

He reached for the bottle, splashed himself a fresh set of libations, and knocked them back one after another in silent toast: to a lordling he'd liked, to a girl with a quick mind and quicker hands, to a certain mynah (if no-one had yet wrung its neck) -- to a whipping or a wedding. Or perhaps to both.

With a swift ship under him and the wide seas ahead and the burn of good rum in his belly, he leaned back, tossed the brooch in the air, caught it, and propped his feet on the table, contemplating the future with content. It had Barbossa in it. And the _Pearl_, that was for certain.

He had no idea how he was going to get the _Black Pearl_ back. But just at this moment he was quite sure he'd find a way.


End file.
